Boomer Boy Running

Mowing lawns. Shoveling snow. Shoveling the walk. Shoveling out the car. Pushing the car. Running from dogs. Runny nose. Arms hurt. Nobody cares. Running from bullies. Nobody does anything about it. Painting the house. Why always me? Why don't I ever get a break? Afraid of heights. Ladder too high. Making them mad. Stung by wasps. Wasps and bumble bees and hornets live in the eaves. Nobody here. Where are they? Where is everybody?

Firing the furnace. Building the bucket-a-day fire. Hair on fire. Face in fireball. Fire hot and wet. I'm twelve. No more eyebrows. No more eyelashes. Making them mad. What about me? Nobody cares. Nobody does anything. Hollering and yelling. Running from it. Running from you. Running from them. Taking out the ashes. Can't lift it. Have to. Arms hurt. Legs hurt. Nobody cares. Too cold outside. Too far away.

Moving their lawn. Mowing our lawn. Trimming our hedge. Trimming their hedges Mowing their lawns. Digging the ditch. Dig it all summer. Every day that summer dig the ditch. No pay. He gives me a tape recorder. I'm thirteen or fourteen I think. I have three pus-filled conical-shaped mounds on my left thigh this summer that took two weeks to go away and the scars are still there. Who did this to me? Best friend and I make radio show. Nobody likes it but us. Arms hurt. Thirsty. Spading her garden. Spading dirt, lifting rocks. Nobody else does it. Fetching things from her pantry. Shoveling back coal. Painting their fence. Pulled by head into Jeep. Feet dragging. Going real fast up hill. Pulled inside. Mean, nasty boy driving. He stole it from his dad. We're twelve. He'll kill me. Where is everyone? The same devil boy put me in a head lock right in the middle of the street one day when I was ten. He tried to crack my skull with his powerful arms. He weighed twice as much as me and was a lot bigger. He wouldn't let me go until I felt something snap and then I screamed. Nobody stopped him. This is summer? 

Watering their garden. Mowing their lawn. Shoveling their coal in. Shoveling our coal in. Shoveling their coal back. Taking out the ashes. Tarring their roof. Higher than our roof. I'm afraid. I'm going to fall. I'm fifteen or sixteen and I'm not allowed to come down. Have to finish job. I almost fell. Cry baby. Boys don't cry. Screaming is OK. Crying is not OK. I stopped crying when I was twelve because nobody up here can stand it. Putting back ladder. Hard to carry. Arms hurt. Getting their ladder out. Getting our ladder out. Digging his garden. It'll take a week. I get three dollars. I'm twelve I think. Arms hurt. Clay dirt. Takes two weeks. Still only three dollars. But it's money for work. Not at home. No pay there. Get a dime or fifteen cents for after school snack and that makes me happy, then a quarter or so later. But no allowance. Kids don't get paid up here. They just work. Summer is work. Running from BBs, running from pellets, running from dogs, peddling fast before dogs bite me, running from fireball, running from chains, running from pipe wrench, Running from death. I'm old enough to drive now. Where is everybody?

Cutting wood. Carrying wood. Chopping wood. Shoveling walks. Carrying. Unloading. Lifting. Watch TV there and it gets real small. Picture just a dot. I'm seven or eight and sink down into the big chair. There's nothing to me. I'm sick and skinny. I feel safer here. I wake up. Missed the show. Go home and eat. Can't finish supper. They make me. They watch TV and I sit at the kitchen table. My food is cold. I'm not hungry. I feel full all the time. I can't go to the bathroom right. Why do I have to eat when I feel full? Why are they mad at me because I don't feel good? When you are sick it doesn't make me mad. It makes me sad. Nobody cares. I'm afraid. I don't feel good. I must be what grownups call heartsick when they talk about themselves, which is all the time. When you're just a boy who never steals or swears and who never misses mass and who does all his chores every day, even when it hurts, it's better to be dead than heartsick, year after year. There is no God. I missed shows on TV because I wouldn't eat. Can't eat. Not won't eat. Putting up their Christmas lights outside again. They never do it now. I do it. Feel shock. Electricity hurts bad. Stupid boy. Christmas lights up the street and all across. It snows. I am happy. The church bell rings. I'm late for supper. Running home hard. Now they're mad. Can't eat again.

She wanted me to be an altar boy so I did it for ten years. Kneeling hurts my back. But you have to in this church. Sometimes forever. I'm seven. I get up at five am to serve mass at seven. Then I come home and drink tea and have a bite of butter toast and then I walk to school. The day has just started and I'm already tired. Nobody cares. Why can't I lay down and sleep? They don't like it but they don't do anything. I guess most parents don't do anything except make you listen. They're mad at her. She's mad at them. I'm caught in the middle and I thought I was a good boy. The Irish priests were friendly but they drink and smoke and swear like everybody else. But they're very friendly and courteous to everyone. They seem to like everybody and smile and laugh a lot.

The Slovak priests are mean and fussy about everything. The Slovak women are mannish old cronies who hate everything on earth, especially men and boys. The mean Slovak priests don't like anything or anybody and they don't care how that looks to others. Nobody seems to care about their behavior up here. But I do. The sisters sure like the girls and cater to them. But they don't like the boys at all, and they aren't mean to us, but they're not friendly to us at all. And they think that is OK. It's not OK. We put up the one Slovak priest's Christmas lights. He is friendly to us but spiteful to everybody during the sermons. He smokes a lot. But the other Slovak priest was always drinking and mean and hateful and they got rid of him.

How did Slovak people, and especially the women, get to be so mean? The women are oddly affected by other women, like they were men instead of women, and they think that's not strange and unsettling for children to see? They also relish misery and delight in unsavory things. They think telling a lie is the same as telling the truth and it makes them feel better than the truth does. It's sickening to witness this. These horrid women are not nice people. Unlike my kind, quiet, Slovak grandfather, who was the nicest man I ever knew. He made me feel good about being alive, like my other grandfather did. I wish I could have gone with my Slovak grandfather when he died. Especially since I was the one who found him dead. I couldn't bring him back to life, and I tried, but his heart finally quit. He is still a big part of my life. Each and every day.

Cardinals and popes dress and act like kings. Doesn't anyone notice that? Why should we kiss their rings? All priests drive big black cars that cost a lot. Some men get mad about that. I was an altar boy for ten long years. Life is not too short. It's too long. I did it for my grandmother. I'm seventeen now and I never go back to church. Not any church. Not ever. I never went back. Church is for people who won't do the work of living their own lives. That's our job and nobody else's. Priests can't relate to women and nuns can't relate to men. How does that makes them better than regular people? Something is wrong here.

I'm eight or nine and I sniff all the time because of my sinuses but no one cares. It makes them mad. And I feel weak and anemic and that's because I can't eat right or go to the bathroom right and that embarrasses them. We're playing outside and you hit me because you people think that's what I'm for. It breaks my heart. I'm sick and I want to die. Go ahead and beat me up. You only think that's what I'm for. They break up the fight and I get sent to bed at 7:30 on a beautiful summer evening for crying and you get to keep on playing in the beautiful summer sun. They're mad at me because I cried and fought back, screaming and crying, because of the utter horror and indignity of being alive around people like this. People who should love me instead of being mean to me because they like to do that. When I cried on my bed upstairs with a broken heartsick soul they hollered nasty mean things and threats up the stairs at me and then I cried in my pillow so they couldn't hear it. Screaming is OK. Crying is not. Is dying OK?

If there was a god he or she or it would have come and taken me away from all of you a long time ago. To a place where somebody loved me for who I was. Someplace where being mean and hating things is something you do by yourself. No one benefits from that. And I still take care of you. And you treat me worse than anybody has ever treated me simply because you can get away with it. All these years of living your life instead of mine and not once did you ever ask me how I was doing. "It's not in my nature," you told me. As if that could ever mean that ignoring how I feel is OK. It's not OK. You never apologized to anyone. Not ever. You shout at me all the time because you are mad at the world. Me, the one who takes care of you. And when I finally asked you to apologize to me for shouting at me and screaming lies about how I never listen to you (listening to you is, in fact, my entire life and has been for the past 18 years) you shake your head and say, "I will not." And I have to calmly accept that answer because I cannot leave because I have turned my life over to you so you would be cared for at home and not in an institution. And you think treating me like that is OK. It is not OK. The fact that you are mean and reckless with your hatred is not my fault. The fact that you do  not like to speak the truth and that you lie recklessly to make yourself look untouchable and to hurt me, who has never lied to anyone — not ever — can no longer be forgiven. Not when forgiveness becomes enablement. You hate everyone and everything and it's not my fault. You treat me like dirt, like the enemy, and I still can't get away from you.

Who or what gave you permission to throw your own arthritic, broken-down, old 19-year-old cat out the dining room window by the scruff of his neck because "he doesn't listen to you" and makes a fool out of you when you think he wants out, while you wait and wait and wait. This is what cats do. They have an innate evil presence and that's why the Egyptians worshiped them and why most men don't like them. Why can't you figure this out and stop catering to him? Yes, I know he lands on pillows that are steps down to the patio and yes I know this is the "door" you two use when I'm upstairs or mowing the lawn but it's also because you want control of him. You also hate him because he's male. How in the world can you justify being "mad" at the both of us — and especially angry at me — when he wants me to leave him out instead of you. I never threw him out a window and you've done it more than once. And he's your cat, not mine. How dare you throw things around the kitchen like an irate baseball player and then pretend you can't lift the TV remote control when I enter the room or when a visitor is present, watching and pitying you so you can revel in your sick, twisted portrayal of a suffering woman? Why do you lie so much? Then you use two hands to life the remote control device and pretend to grunt and shake because you love a lie and you absolutely adore perverse attention.

This behavior is evil. You know what you're doing. Your perverse melodramas are not my fault or my doing and it's not your old age. You have always been like that. When I really have to stop and fall into a chair or onto a bench because my back has given out again, you will not look at me. You pretend I'm not there or you pretend to fight with the TV remote. "There's nothing on." "They're so dumb." (male weather forecasters). You never ask me if I'm OK because, "There's nothing I can do about it," you told me more than once. Like that's any kind of answer or any way to treat somebody who made sure you still had a home of your own and a house to grown old in and not some noisy room that smells like urine and disinfectant and that looks out onto a graveyard. But I'm not so sure I'd do this again for you.

I think I'm on another planet that resembles Earth but I know this is real. You love Ginger Rogers but we can't watch those fabulous old black-and-white musicals because you hate Fred Astaire. You hate all men who dance in the movies. You only like the women. I like the women, too. More than the men, believe me, but I don't hate Ginger Rogers and Vera Ellen and that fabulous Ann Miller (the best tap dancer of all time) because of their extraordinary talent, like you hate Fred Astaire and Donald O'Connor and Bobby Van. No wonder Slovak women love the seamy, dark side of life. That's where hatred resides. And this is nothing compared to the fact that children are nothing special to any of you. And I omitted the worst about the Balkan dark side. The things lesbian female relatives do to their own under age female and male relatives. While no one's looking. It's only touching, you think? Pre-school and elementary kids. The unspeakable. The unforgivable. That's right, it wasn't you with the touching. It was her. How was this ever allowed? No wonder she showered us with so many gifts. Death can only be welcome if it's permanent. Who would want to go to heaven and see those who allowed such things? If I saw this relative in the afterlife I would kill her before anyone could stop me. Not even the space bugs you people call God could stop me from doing that. On top of that, I wouldn't set foot in Slovenia or Slovakia or any other Balkan state for all the money in the world. And not Austria or Sweden, either. What makes them any different? There's something seriously wrong with you people. The freakiest, sickest things I ever knew about or witnessed, in real life, regarding sexual molestation of children were perpetrated by Slovak women and a Slovak priest (not mine). Not only do you scum bugs not deserve an afterlife, you didn't deserve the first one you misused. I wouldn't go to Slovenia or Slovakia to take a shit.

That's right. It's no way to live when living is all I have. And I am all used up. There is nothing left of me. Except this blog. I've got to have something that I can control, that belongs to me. It's called survival.

Pulling nails. Straightening nails. Where are they? Why me? Tied to roof. Hot on roof. I hate summer. I just want to sleep. Running from cars. Get out of my way kid. Running from bullies. Running from dogs. They point. They laugh. I'm really afraid. Can't cry. Can't fight. Don't want to fight. Don't like fighting. Don't like a fight. Little man. I'm not a man. I'm a boy. Arms too thin. Legs too skinny. Go to fancy doctor. What's anemia? Take pills. Eat more. Don't like to eat. Eating makes me have to go and I can't go right. Not since I was seven. Bullies in my bedroom. Arms twisted over my head backwards. They laugh when I scream. Say uncle you little... Arms hurt bad. I hear a snap. I hear more laughing. Nobody cares. Where are they? Nobody does anything. Running from another older bully. Another day. Another summer. He holds me by throat downstairs. Neck hurts. I'm off the floor. Nobody comes. He leaves. He gets away with it. Forever. I don't. I'm the sissy. I'm a cry baby. I made everybody mad. Except the grandmother who wanted me to be a priest. She made me feel safe and cared for and sometimes happy. Not like the other one who didn't like anything or anybody, including me. And not like home. Home is not a nice place. Home and school is where they teach you to be what they want you to be. Maybe some day I'll get to leave and go someplace where I'm not a boy who's sick and weak all the time and hated because of that.

A woman's thing is ugly and scary. I saw it when I was two. I couldn't get away. And, no, this wan't the babysitter. 60 years ago, I was sitting in that little duck rocking chair in "The Brick Row", the one with with the little handle hole on each side, getting my snow boots put on and THIS THING FROM THE BOTTOMLESS PIT OF THE COSMOS — with her panties rolled down and her legs open to expose herself TO ME and to scare me out of my 2-year-old wits said to me (and I quote — who could ever FORGET IT?), "Are you looking down there? she says and it's not a nice voice. She is smiling and I am scared. No, she was not the babysitter. You know who she was, do I need to spell it out for you? Man-hating "women's women" should not get married and have kids. I didn't know that then. I was two. But I know that now. Thats' right, this sick, selfish, twisted, dark-souled woman had no right to do that to me. What kind of woman is so sick and/or so desperate for attention or abominable, lascivious thrills that she would resort to that? Why are you showing me that? Close your legs. Ugly. Scary. Ugly. Hairy dark monster thing. This is a sick thing for you to do to me. I can't wait to see the clean white snow. Who put me here? I'm three now. Why do I have to look at your menstrual bath water and your menstrual pee in the commode? Can't you see that I'm scared and bewildered? Why don't you flush it before I use it? And who are these other strange women who seem to delight in destroying the innocence of children? I was a just a little boy. Why did the babysitter paint my fingernails pink when I was three? Made my nice grandmother mad at the baby sitter. She was getting out of a taxi cab and I showed her my nails but I didn't know why. She laughed and then reminded me that I was a boy not a girl and that made me feel good about being a boy and then ashamed about my pink fingernails but I didn't do it. She did it. The babysitter. My nice grandmother went into our house. That babysitter was never allowed back. I'm a boy, not a girl. I was three and I knew that. But today people are mad and mean and hollering and I feel bad. I don't feel safe anymore or around you or your evil, lesbian sibling who buys us presents so she can.... YOU GOT IT. WHO IN THE HELL PUT YOU IN MY LIFE? Who in the HELL told you that it's OK to molest the male and female underage and, in one case, the preschool children of your relatives? It's a good thing you DIED before I became a man or I would have made you disappear. And if I have to see YOU in the next life I'll kill you and the ALL the celestials who put you in my life. And THAT is a promise.

I am seven and a girl in class makes me laugh and that makes her laugh but it makes the teacher mad. She paddles us with a wooden paddle and I don't cry because I am used to being hurt. That's what a boy is for. But I cry for the girl because I like her and she is just a little girl. She lied about making a face at me and making me laugh. The teacher goes berserk and beats the girl again. That is allowed up here. That's what kids are for up here. The girl cries and cries as the pretty teacher's face turns red and ugly. You lied to me! she screams over and over again until she gets tired of hitting the girl's rear end. I wanted to tell the teacher to hit me again instead because that's what a boy is for but I knew that would have made her madder and that she would have taken it out on that girl. Still, her paddle was smaller than the one the teacher next year had, the one she hit boys with so hard they went flying across the room and even the tough ones cried. That's what boys were for and it didn't stop there.

I am four, maybe five, and I am up above the rooftops because I sat on one end of the the board and he jumped off a high place onto the other end. I looked down onto our roof and their roof and when I came down he didn't catch me like he said he would. I smelled beer as I passed through the hands that didn't grab me and then I hit the board real hard sitting down. Screaming is OK but not crying but I did both. And then I laid down on the big day bed inside and wondered why they had sent me here to this awful place. A place where grownups have fun when boys are sad or when they get hurt and scream. Screaming is OK but not crying. I couldn't run away because I couldn't walk right and there was no place to go anyway and they would just bring me back here. I am not an acrobat. I am a little boy. But nobody cares about that.

I sniff all the time. I can't help it. Something up my nose. Up in my head. My nose runs all the time. Why do you make fun of me when I sniff? I would never make fun of you because you don't feel good. I wish I could feel good. I feel awful. Have to lift weights when I turned twelve and could go to the bathroom OK for the first time in five years. Stupid sport, weightlifting. But it makes him proud. I get real strong in high school but I ruined my left elbow making him proud. I can press forty pounds more than my body weight over my head. So what? Now my back hurts all the time and my left elbow doesn't work right. It still doesn't. Now I can eat and go to the bathroom right but I'm still skinny. Everybody hates a skinny teenage boy up here. I know stuff. I ask questions. People hate me because I'm smart and athletic. Can't nap. Have to mow lawn. Why don't you mow the lawn? No, I don't say "let's us". I lisp because I'm always nervous and scared because I'm skinny and weak. It's not stupid. It's not a speech impediment. You hate me and you should love me. Two s's come out instead of one. Stop making fun of me. I don't do that to you. Why can't I just die and then you'll all be happy?

An orange disk pulls me up into its glowing white bottom as it comes down from the sky. I am seventeen and I and a friend are on our way to Senior Play practice. I am driving. We don't make it there because that few minutes was really an hour and a half. My parents' car is still parked along the road with my friend inside. He can't or won't talk. Now I'm afraid for him. The disk follows us to school and shows itself to everyone. Two teachers and a couple dozen kids at "play practice" watch it and they say the stupidest things. They think it's a power buildup on the power line but it's not anywhere near a power line. It's in the middle of the valley about a hundred feet off the ground. They still think it's a power line overload even after it came so close to us that it was as big as a football at three hundred yards or so. They're stupid and cowardly. It zoomed out of sight up the valley with a whistling sound. They all walked inside like zombies. Except for me. I still have the deep scars on both legs where nobody can see them unless you are looking for them. My legs haven't worked right ever since then. I was seventeen and they thought they owned me. Nobody owns people. Not even the gods, who don't exist anyway. When I sit they fall asleep.

Running from dogs. So many dogs. Mean people hollering at me. Sidewalk not safe. Riding new birthday present, a second-hand, 24-inch boy's bike. Age nine again. Running from dog. Slapped in the face. Big, nasty kid hates me. Riding bike the other way. Wake up on couch. Don't remember. Head hurts real bad. Go to doctor. Go to movies. I'm nine today. Throwing up in movie theater. Everything spinning. My birthday today. My bike. I like my bike. Can't remember. Can't go to bathroom right. Can't go to bathroom right for five years. Five years is forever when you're a scared boy who can't poop right. Why can't I have a door on my bedroom like everybody else? Why don't you shut your bedroom door when you change clothes. When you close it part way and I have to ask you something, don't you realize you were naked from the waist up because I saw you in your mirror and you wonder why I scurried downstairs. Why are there so many lesbians in this town? YOU PEOPLE ARE FREAKS. Running from bullies. Running from cars. Running from German Americans, running from Irish Americans, running from Scottish Americans, running from Slovak Americans Running from the meanest people in America. Running from them. Running from everybody. Running from you. Running from all of you.

Editor's Note 5-5-14: So, you lurking, cowardly snoops, how did you like that? Did that amuse you? Did that titillate your senses? That's right, this is not an excerpt from any book. This is an accurate, true, genuine recollection of a real boy's real Appalachian life. Unfortunately. Ever day of my life I've wondered what it would be like to not have to face another day. For me, the best thing about life is that one day it will end. After 12 years, 9 books, 10 blogs with nearly 1400 posts and 162 videos, I've had to come to conclusion that the human race on Earth is not worth saving.

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My First 11:11 Experience

I'm writing this blog post today to be on record, first and foremost, about something which I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever but, nevertheless, something resembling paranormal activity and the resulting host of social phenomena that have been sweeping a lot of people off their feet for quite some time now. And now it's finally reached me. I don't know all the details about the 11:11 Phenomenon and I'm not researching it beyond a cursory Google Search for some background. Why am I so nonchalant about this? Because I just don't give a damn anymore.

I'm tired of this smoke-and-mirrors world and its fascination with hooded ascetics, robed charlatans and aging baby-boomer relics pretending to be spiritual guides to a higher realm of existence and the corresponding cloak-and-dagger element dedicated to guarding the imprisoned truth so it never gets out. This kind of pseudo-spiritual nonsense with its "cosmic doubletalk" and phony psychobabble is only masking what truly lies beneath, which is the truth about science and mathematics and their whimsical use as tools by invisible beings who violate the natural order of things just to bewitch and beguile hapless Homo sapiens who are always looking for something or someone to take charge of their lives. Instead of taking their own lives in their own hands and making the best of it.

One thing you folks will always get from me is honesty. Pure and simple. Last night I was online, placing an advertisement for the new edition of The Four Bloggers of The Apocalypse on one of the sidebars of one of my ten blogs here at Blogger when the lights in my writing room began to flicker, off and on, on and off. My computer screen dimmed and then brightened again, several times. The three green lights on my modem went out and the red one came on. I'd lost my Internet connection. The lights upstairs kept flickering, almost like Morse Code. Hurricane Sandy was still two days away from us, so it wasn't that. A misty rain fell outside and the air was still.

I rushed downstairs and asked my mother (who was watching TV) if the lights had flickered downstairs as well and she confirmed that they had. The TV set was still on but the picture was just snow (white noise). I walked into the den where I have a digital clock on the bar with no battery backup in it. Whenever there is the slightest power interruption, this clock begins blinking 12:00. But, it wasn't blinking and the lights were still flickering all over the house, but not outside, not anywhere in town that I could see. The clock on the bar said a steady 11:11. The current real time for U.S. Eastern Daylight Saving Time (we set our clocks back in Pennsylvania to Standard Time at midnight on Sunday November 4th this year). That's right, 11:11 was the correct time on all the other clocks in the house and on our wristwatches.

When the lights stopped flickering in our house and the TV came back on, the bar clock said 11:12 and this, folks, is a very disturbing but very true story. And, no, I don't like it. I don't like it one damn bit. But what are you going to do? Just like everyone else, I'll keep living my life like always and continue writing and being the primary, at-home caregiver for my 81-year-old mother. And I'll keep trying to become a better person each and every day. I don't need "spirit guides" to tell me that. Living and evolving is all that's required of any of us. Living our lives as best we can, each and every day, while looking forward to tomorrow.

Post updated 5-25-14: Disturbing "otherworldly" phenomena is so prevalent in my life that I often ignore it and put it "on my back burner for later". The following is no exception, except that I actually forgot to blog about it. Why? I suppose it's because I no longer give a shit. I'm more impressed by a passing sun shower. Anyway, here goes. On Veteran's Day, November 11, 2013, I walked outside to look at the sky. I had a feeling that the dark-souled powers-that-be just might pull another 11:11 stunt with me, knowing I would kill them outright if I got the chance. I'm not kidding, either, and they damn well know it. I wasn't expecting an 11:11 blinking clock stunt again or another staccato light show in the house and it's a good thing they didn't try it because NOTHING they do to me is FREE. There will be a payback and it will be fatal FOR THEM, a "second-death fatality", no less.

So, around 6:00 PM or so I looked up at the twilight sky from the entrance to our patio and saw an orange ball ascending from the treetops northeast of me, from where I figured State Game Lands 101 would be, about three miles East North East of my house. I knew it wasn't a plane or a star or a satellite, based on my own late 1960's and early 1970's UFO sightings. It "rose" straight up and then flew toward me, making an angled, directional change of course that no human aircraft could make, not even a helicopter, because there was no sound whatsoever. It split into "two round orange balls" at the point where I figured it would be about halfway between the "10 Acres" area of State Game Land 101 and my house. Then it slowly flew above me at what might have been a thousand feet altitude and on an "ENE to WSW tack". And it made no sound whatsoever, at least none that I could hear.

There was the hint of a dark body to it but I couldn't make out its true shape. No airplane at that altitude could fly so slowly and I've never seen light patterns like that. The two orange ball lights appeared to be at least a hundred yards apart and were situated at the nose, but beneath what appeared to be a dark circular "saucer". Somewhat below those orange balls and at what appeared to be about three hundred yards behind the dark, semi-amorphous shape were two lights that did not blink. A green "starboard" light and a red "port" light, both of them about a fourth the size of the front orange lights, which only glowed. They did not shine. And, the red port and green starboard lights, which ought to have been blinking, were on all the time. What did I do? I gave them the finger, said "Fuck You" to them, told them I wan't afraid of them and then went inside. I had supper to prepare and THAT was the most important thing that evening. NOT playing hide-and-seek with high-tech slime who deserve to be exterminated. And THIS, people, is a true story. No shit.

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The Power of Hate

The best people in the world are people who want to be good and do the right things because they know that this is the way to secure the best things in life for others. After sixty years in this world — and ten of them as a science fiction writer — I am not surprised by the disturbing discovery that the best people are also the ones with the least power to make a positive difference in this world. It appears that this is what planet Earth is really about. It's a playground for the bullies, the rich and the twisted geniuses of this backward, selfish and greedy world.

But, as a seeker of hidden truths, I can almost assure you that this level of iniquity goes much higher than that. Earth, like many other "evolutionary worlds" is a playground for the whimsical delight and amusement of "the gods". And what is a "god"? Nothing more than an ancient, twisted, powerful, psychotic being with virtually unlimited power. But it's a power that will eventually be unseated by the combined power of countless good people who will one day dethrone these tyrants and restore the natural order to the cosmos.

How do I know that this planet is ruled by hate? Here's an example from my own life. The names in the following true story have been withheld for obvious reasons but this is a revelation that needs to surface before me and my 81-year-old widowed mother can begin our next journey in the cosmos. I cannot allow her to leave this Earth without some justice for the cruel acts committed against her. Having one parent leave this wicked world bewildered and betrayed was enough. That will never happen again as long as I live and breathe. I owe them that much.

Back in the 1980s my mother and father wanted to buy a piece of property to develop in their retired years, at their leisure, and they found that the owner of this property was willing to sell it to them. So, my parents — against their better judgment, but trusting this buyer — took out a second mortgage on their treasured Dauphin County home and borrowed the money to buy this envisioned "retirement property".

Then the day came for the buyers and the seller to meet and finalize the transfer of property. My parents drove over two hours, one-way, that day to meet the seller who, without any regard whatsoever for the welfare of my mother and father, changed his mind, backing out the deal, and leaving my parents holding a second mortgage and their horrifying outrage.

I know for a fact that this seller betrayed my parents deliberately because he hated my father. I know this because this man told me many, many times — right to my face — that he hated my father (and this guy knows why he got away with his cruel remarks). So, his mustered power of hatred was enough to destroy the futures of two individuals who never did anything to him in their entire lives. This was a cruel, deliberate, evil act of hatred perpetrated upon my parents by someone we've known all our lives.

When my father died in 1995, leaving my widowed mother with a staggering grief that was inconsolable for the next several years, she was also faced with a staggering "balloon payment" on her house, a monthly mortgage payment that was so large she was forced to put her house on the real estate market. I gave up my Harrisburg apartment and moved in with her because she didn't drive and could not possibly be alone. Then I left my place of employment after seven years (the highest-paying job I've ever had but one that was being phased out anyway and after which I could have successfully interviewed for other ones) and moved her "back home" to Snow Shoe (via Clarence for three years) where we now live in a rented house and where we barely make a go of things as our mutual health steadily declines.

To make things worse, this hateful seller, who betrayed us all (my father, my mother and me), is considered, unimaginably, to be one of the "good guys" in this world by some of those closest to us. How do we know this? Because my mother and I had to eat these words at our own kitchen table from the mouths of people once close to us, who betrayed us as well. That's right, my widowed mother and I ate hateful shit by the bucketful from our own people who couldn't care less that this single, hateful person, in a single, willful act of hate, destroyed the long-awaited future of my mother and father.

There is no forgiveness for such acts of hate. If you people finally realize who you are, it is to your advantage to stay away from my mother, who's been betrayed enough. And, most of all, you will not want to see the formidable side of me who will, without hesitation, defend my mother and myself against your evil, hateful presence in our lives. My own horrified outrage from being betrayed over and over again by those closest to me is enormous but I've put that "on hold" for now because my mother comes first. When good people bearing the truth combine forces and confront evil and hate, face-to-face, the power of hate doesn't stand a chance.