Wisdom of the Prophet Book 2

A fresh batch of mumbling from the ether...

HTB Chronicills - Harold Escapes the Molemen

Rating Sesame Street Characters

	The Count -  Talk about obsessive compulsive disorder, the Count is stuck in 1, 2, 3 ah-ah-ah ways: His career is limited to scenes requiring less than 4 items. His repertoire is a little repetitive. Purple is not a complexion much in demand outside of the zombie genre, but what a snappy dresser.   Still, anyone who can summon thunder and lightning at will gets kudos from me. B+
	Big Bird -  Although it has become apparent that he has been dabbling in hallucinogens lately, he's been a staple of the cast for so long that the star will remain on birds dressing room door for a long time to come. Sure, he may see imaginary creatures while hiding behind the fence, but the kids never question why. If they aren't asking embarrassing questions, BB will headline every foreseeable episode. Sadly, if there were ever a serious economic depression on the street, Bird will be the first one in seven-foot fryer. Great leg warmers!   A-
	Oscar "The Grouch" -  I may be unable to render an unbiased opinion on my favorite character on the Street. I envy Oscar, not only does he have a great location and appreciating real estate values, but he has nearly endless opportunities to make rude comments, sarcastic remarks, and be generally unpleasant to anyone he meets!  This is what I dreamed of doing for a living when I grew up. I spent hours in the garage can practicing tossing things out on the patio.  My father would yell about the mess, and my mother about my smell. But I had dreams, big dreams.  Until they all came crashing down. Jim Henson died before I could audition my trash tossing skills... Heartbreaking!  You're still the greatest green grouch on the Street.   A+
	Elmo - This "Monster come lately" doesn't do anything remotely monster-like. He doesn't toss giant foam letters into the air and shred them. He doesn't make ringing sounds at telephones, and he sure can't play the drums worth a damn. So, what gives? Being alarming cute to children and singing "Jack it, Jack it, Jack it!" should get him a 20-year sex offender's charge, but no. He's everything that is wrong with our permissive society and the loss of family values on the Street.  D-
	Kermit - For an amphibian Kermit has made it to the top of the heap. Not that summiting a pile of slimy green flesh is much to brag about, but for a species whose normal high point is to have your lower appendages served up to compliment the beer, it's not so bad. I always considered Kermie a trend setter within a decade of him introducing the term, "Hi Ho!”, it’s become a staple of the common vernacular in every double platinum album in the rap genre.   Kermit's cosmopolitan style and network news anchorman manner has kept the “powers that be” behind the Street groveling before his dressing room door for decades. He's the Walter Cronkite, Jim Morrison, Ed Sullivan mix that keeps children and adults mesmerized. Personally, I think it's time for a regime change. I'd back a coup by one of the Pipe Bangers from Fragglerock. We need a renegade at the helm. Viva la Revolution!   B-
	Snuffleupagus - Running a close second in the Imaginary Creatures category to my seven foot Wookie, Snuffy is the coolest mastodon on the Street. His being a product of pure hallucination only makes him all the more loveable. His wisdom is unequalled, and his head cold intonation adds a feeling of that childhood friend who no one else would associate with but you. The real benefit of such a chum is that if he pisses you off, you can spear him and feed him to your clan. Nothing but upside here!   A-
	Ernie and Burt - What can one say about two young men who share the same bedroom, but separate beds, except that they modeled their decorum after Dick Vandyke. Their personality types are obviously the Odd Couple, and that they share the same barbershop with Beaker from Muppet Labs. My issue is that they aren't edgy enough for my taste. I want to see Ernie joining a "motorcycle club" and Burt shacking up with a bleach blonde like his idol Sid Vicious. Gimme’ something to work with guys!  C+

Wisdom of the Prophet Book 1

The Prophet deciphering mumblings from the ether using his broken brain phone .

With Malice Towards Some...

On Law and an Equitable Community

















Nearly every community you will ever take part in will already have established rules that the majority of the community members agree to uphold. Whether these parameters come in the form of codified laws, as they do in the modern nation state, or simple informal traditions as they may at a Bible study. There are rules everywhere.


If your idea of heaven is no rules, then pray you never get to heaven. The problem with no rules (anarchy) is that someone is always going to interpret the power vacuum as an opportunity to force others to do their bidding. Essentially, they will make you their slave. Which, if there are no rules, is completely acceptable.


Do you see how fast the situation went from No Rules = Total Freedom to No Rules = Slavery? In real world applications, the decent happens just as rapidly.


My point is that rules (laws, regulations, codes, etc.) aren't all bad. Most, especially the most basic, are generally good and beneficial to individuals and the communities they build. Granted, some rules are inherently bad. So, we need to differentiate between what constitutes a good rule and then by a process of elimination, we can determine what embodies a bad rule.


A good rule should provide a benefit to the community as a whole without significantly harming part of the community in exercising their civil rights.

So, using that reasonably compact definition, a bad rule would:
Provide benefit to a specific person(s) or no one at all
Negatively impact the rights of part of the community


The "poll tax" laws implemented during the late 1800's to prevent African Americans and Native Americans from voting would be a BAD rule, using my litmus test since it negatively impact the rights of part of the community.






A law which makes a slave of one man to another would be a BAD rule, because it negatively impacts the rights of part of the community (and I would add that it is inherently immoral, as well).


In my little corner of the world, the City council, at great expense to the tax-payers, recently annexed a large wooded wilderness area where many of the local homeless lived. Then, by using a tortured legal definition reclassified this wilderness area as a "park". This annexation allowed the council to pass a camping ban ordinance to force the homeless out of town.


Before I go on, let me cite some of the preposterous clauses which define "Camping" in this ordinance:


"Camping" means the use of park land or other publicly owned property for living accommodation purposes including but not limited to any of the following:


1. Sleeping activities


(Is closing my eyes or reclining on the grass a sleeping activity?)


2. Making preparations to sleep


(Yawning could be interpreted as preparations to sleep!)


3. Laying down of bedding for the purposes of sleeping


(Define "bedding" and how can you know my intention when I lay out a picnic blanket!


4. Storing personal belongings


(By what means and in what capacity?)


At best, the ordinance is too vague and would be struck down in total due to the lack of a severability clause, but who cares? These "transients", regardless of whether their families have lived in this area for two or three generations, are just trash anyways. Right?


Forgive my digression.


So, what benefit did all this very expensive legal wrangling provide for the community?


One might argue that the community gained a park, but in truth, it is still the wooded wilderness area it was prior to the legal definition change.


The only benefit of the ordinance is to legalize the prosecution the homeless, and thereby run them out of town. That makes it appear as if they solved homelessness in their community. Which... may I have the envelope please...


Increases Property Values!


Theoretically, at least. In truth, it proves how nearsighted the city council members are. While we have people living on the streets of a relatively rich rural community, the council members are annexing and renaming a wilderness area as "park". What is more, the land they annexed does not lend itself to zoning for other needs, such as affordable housing, of which the community is in desperate need.


They claim there's a serious drug problem in the homeless community, but has anyone checked the City councils urine lately? It's a simple, almost natural, step from collecting the garbage to disposing of it.


What next, the "cure" for Cancer? Great! Anyone diagnosed with cancer has 12 hours to leave town or face 90 days in jail per offence. Oh look, no more cancer! This is too close to the logic by which the Nazis, Pol Pot, and Stalin's purges were driven. Justice becomes justification for self-serving ideology. When the Law becomes a tool to work any deed no matter what it's need.


What of the Law Enforcement Officers, who have been drafted into the role of garbage men for politicians with the only solution to a growing community problem of unemployment, affordable housing, access to education, efficient transportation, and lack of social services is incarceration?


I understand that the typical sentence for violating the camping ordinance is a mere 3-7 days in a very safe and clean jail complete with cable TV and a professional correctional staff, but a little evil does not beget good, only greater evil.


A camping ban to keep the "park" safe for residence to enjoy by locking up those inconvenient and unsightly "transients" may sound like a blessing, however a kiss from a disciple is not always an act of love.


When people accept a "get rid of them" mentality towards any part of our community, we are all at risk. Many say there are too many problems with the people in our community transients, but they forget that the problems are in the population at large.


The "good people" say ship them off to Bellevue, but don't you dare bring homeless from other areas here!


Hypocrisy!



While the "good citizen" hides behind the thin, yet opaque, veneer of "law" the transient is condemned by it. Magistrates and Martyrs are defined by an act written by politicians with malice towards some. These people they call, "transients" are us, the people whose families built the community for generations now these Council members eject them as transients, drifters, vagrants, and undesirables...


Because the Council members have failed to do their job for ALL the people of this community, or perhaps they are working for someone else under a different agenda where certain types won't fit in. Why Bellevue? Why not a more final solution?

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I did not speak out;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

- Martin Niemöller

A Scripture of Salvation

Burning Love

A Post-Modern Proverb

The viciousness that we express 

becomes the fallow fields of our emptiness.

But the love we sow with tender hand 

becomes the harvest of a happy man.

Rules for Writers

1. You're never going to make money writing.

Resign yourself to this fact, and be happy. If you have a passion for the written word, you write because you love it, and it's a great way to avoid real life experiences you find unpleasant like working for a living. My methodology is using my work to support my bad habits; eating, housing, my homeless ministry, writing, and the chemical enhancement required to maintain my particular brand of mental illness. I prefer menial, mindless jobs like inventing new punctuation, housekeeping, civil service, or being Scarlett Johansson's sex slave (Yeah, let's linger here for a moment.) This allows my mind to be actively pursuing writing while getting paid. You could try selling narcotics, however you may find your writing stunted by the jail experience. I could not find enough paper on my last non-narcotic related visit, so I started using the blank back side of court paperwork with little or no regard for whose name appeared on the less interesting side. Luckily, I only spent nine months in a county jail, and I nearly bankrupted the institution by writing legal motions. Lawyers versus writers and the pen is mightier than the gavel, as well. Ah, but the true beauty of this tale is being unfettered by "professional legal standards" my legal motions were chocked-full of Muppet, Godzilla, and cartoon references. Without warning I would toss in theoretical physics, cutting edge biology, or an ancient philosopher just to remind his Honor that I maintain a vast and well rounded warehouse of obscure references in my Broken Brain. Sadly, this particular judge had very limited formal esoteric education and couldn't appreciate my hilarity and vast collection of useless facts and amazing anomalies, but I appreciate his playing anyway.

2. Never let facts get in the way of a good story.

I've always said, "I don't care if it's true or not, make it a good story", and I maintain that this inconsequential detail is the key to good creative writing. Coincidentally, it is also the key to bad accounting, government, legal testimony, marital relationships, theology, and probably a bunch of other stuff, too. None of which are germane to the topic of this document but still nicely segues me to my next rule.

3.  Omit filler material at your discretion

Enough said.

4.  Immerse yourself in the story

This is one of the most difficult aspects of writing an author must master. Characters require three-dimensional personalities and human characteristics that allow the reader to know them over time. Your revelation of these qualities must be metered in the way real relationships develop. This provides you with opportunities for shock, surprise, awe, wonder, disappointment, despair, or anything else that fleshes in the construct of your character and your story. Failure to comply with this rule immediately relegates you to the group of everyone who is Literate, but not an Author.

Remember there are a lot of bad writers out there and I just happen to be one of them... but you're improving.

5.  Draw your audience

Most people would say, "target your audience" but they are mistaken, mislead, or lying. A good author must have the ability to seduce, enchant, lure, entice, or otherwise bring the reader to their story. A brilliant author (defined as the privileged paid) will draw readers like a vortex good chocolate.

6. Know your character archetypes.

There are exactly 121 different character archetypes to choose from when building characters. Everyone you will ever encounter in your life will fit neatly into one of these categories, except for me, which is why you spend so much time trying to figure out who I am, where I came from, and just as often, what I mean.

This brings me more pleasure than you will ever know.

7. Do your own poopreading.

This will minimize the group of people who recognize you for the shallow, ignorant, scribbler that you truly are. It will not improve your marketability, but it will save you hours of shame and ridicule at the mercy of your more forward thinking and ignominy adverse peers.

8. Never write with a deadline.

You were forced to meet deadlines by unreasonable and untalented lesser hominids throughout your academic career and the best you produced under those barbarous conditions was acceptable for lining a very tolerant parakeet's cage. So, we can dispense with artificial rules and constructs that build walls where our ideas should be laid like megalithic foundations for our posterity. We are far above those silly restrictions which only apply to mere mortals. As writers, we may not really possess superpowers but, if we do a fairly good job, future generations will accept whatever we pen as gospel truth. Plato proved this when he penned a fanciful story about a sinking island powered by crystals and inhabited by ancient aliens who traveled millions of light years to teach us the advanced technology of playing with rocks or some crazy shit like that.

In my own application, I have convinced both coworkers and colleagues that I am a beautiful writer. In fact, I am a passable con-artist who has duped you, my beloved and appreciative audience, into believing that my arbitrary and subjective set of optional guidelines will make your writing as ethereal and brilliant as my own scratching of a semi-literate simpleton with far too much free time on his phone and a phenomenal vocabulary. 

In a few more generations they will write poems and sagas about me that will fill that aforementioned parakeet's cage. This is my legacy to all of you. You get what you deserve, although I always get screwed. I will expound upon this injustice in a future work entitled: Common Complaints from Mediocre Writers.  Don't hold your breath on this one. The scope and scale of content is voluminous. 

There are very few limitations to the human imagination, at least not many which I can imagine. Our lives are already limited by time, our writing should be timeless. I could go on about the tyranny of deadlines for 1,000 pages more, but I have a deadline to meet.

9. Don't beat yourself up if your greatest ideas are seldom appreciated.

That's what critics are for and they have a mortgage to pay as well. Cut them some slack and then bribe them and every publisher you can afford to return the courtesy. I don't understand the intricacies of this rule but apply a theory if it works. If the theory fails, it's just you. You're a total loser! You have been a delusion of adequacy your entire life! You couldn't write a "See Dick Run" book if your entire useless existence depended on it. Look forward to the day when someone with real talent will figure out how to recycle your DNA into a creature with a purpose. But until that eventually, just keep working the theory. If your theory stops working, write some new ones. You can do that. You're a goddamn writer!

10. Never fall into the trap of following the rules

The truly great writers were always adventurous, intrepid, and fearless. But the rest of us are just nerdy introverts that are far too lazy to remember the rules, let alone follow the damn indecipherable things.

So, you just keep on writing because that's what you love to do. After all, a life built around love can't be a total waste, can it?


...and always end the rules with a question mark.

Walls

How would you like me to be
All there is comes naturally
Weighing the balance equally 
So much can be said by my silence 
Hard as it seems all that we need
Is too close to be seen 

See the light I build my walls for you to climb
A billion walls for you to climb
Don't cry I built these walls to hold me tight 
A billion walls can't keep me warm at night 

Here in the valley seasons become cycles like children we mend
Misled, misread, company or companion 
We follow our hearts, we follow our dreams that always seem just out of reach 

We can hide you build your walls for me to climb
A billion walls for me to climb
It's alright you built these walls to hold you tight 
A billion walls can't keep you warm at night 

How hard would life be if we were just free to leave behind the strife
All my words prove is that it's easy to remove these walls if we just try

We're alive tear down these walls set us free
A billion walls should never be
Tear down those walls this very night 
The only thing between us is the light

HTB Chronicills - The Blonde in the Yellow Dress

Harold had been eyeing the hot little chick in the yellow dress for some time now. Every time he came out of his nod, she was there. She didn't talk much, which was a plus for Harold. Especially, now while he was face down in a pool of what might be his own vomit, or maybe it was beef stew, or Alpo. On his next nod, he resolved to give it the taste test.

Whatever the result, he definitely wanted to give the blonde in the yellow dress a taste test. She was kinda short but built like a...

Vomit, definitely vomit, beef stew vomit to be precise. Yeah, now he remembered eating that. It hadn't gone down well, but came up easily enough. I bet she would go down well too. He may have found his dream woman, after all a woman who isn't put off by a man who eats his own puke fits well into Harold's lifestyle.

"Sorry, sorry. ", Harold offered apologetically. But still the petite blonde remained mute. Starring Harold down. He was feeling strangely aroused by her unbroken glare. He summoned all the strength he could muster, which was enough to send his lighter careening across the pavement towards her feet.

Minutes passed and turned into tens of minutes or maybe hours. Who knows? That's one of the things about a nod, time is relative, well everything's relative. Wow, it occurred to Harold, brothers and sisters are relatives too!

Harold tucked that revelation away for later along with his discovery that he too had hands. And then his thoughts returned to her, or perhaps it should be Her. She was still there. Still capturing Harold in Her stare. He moved closer with the fluid and sexy crawl of a Gila monster. A very masculine and available Gila monster. That was the impression he was trying to project. She hadn't laughed and walked away yet, so it seemed to be working.

That's when he noticed her tits; pert and firm. Maybe a B or C, or one of those other letters he couldn't recall right now. Damn her nipples were hard as rocks and he couldn't control himself from taking one in his mouth. Suckling like a baby Gila monster. A sexy, available baby gila monster. She was into this. He could tell by her lack of protest and violence. This was bum heaven. He had reached the Promised Land right here on the sidewalk of North Bend.

She was murmuring now, "Harold, dude."

Yeah, that's it baby scream my name.

Harold, dude? What the fuck?

Yeah, she was enraptured by his sexy, available baby Gila monster styles, Harold smiled to himself.

Then, suddenly, he came crashing back to reality. The hot little petite chick in the yellow dress had transformed into a fucking fire hydrant and a dismayed police officer stood over Harold.

"What the fuck are you doing to that city property? And what the fuck did I just step in?"

Mostly vomit, beef stew vomit mixed with a little sexy, available baby Gila monster semen.

That was all it took to bring on the cuffs.

Later that week, Judge Stewart found no humor in it either. Though Harold was certain the prosecution cracked an involuntary grin or maybe it was a grimace. It mattered little, this was another case of American blind justice, where Harold would blindly sign his name on the first plea bargain he could find. Even if it was someone else's, it was reflexive by now. A learned behavior, like wiping from back to front, once you became comfortable with it, it stuck with you like a criminal record.

"Sir, what does any of this have to do with Harold making it big time?", the bewildered child asked.

"Harold?", Harold puzzled, "who said anything about Harold?"

"You did", the tot looked confused, which is the next step after bewildered.

"Man, I bet Harold could have used those handcuffs on her, " was all Harold remembered thinking think about as he was stuffed head first into the cruiser. Then he'd curled up and nodded off into oblivion like a sexy, available baby Gila monster should. 

The boy starred at the old man who cracked a smile below his glassy eye. The boy tried to determine if he should dial 911 or continue to ignore the gnarled ones mounting dementia. He decided to leave weird enough alone and went back to playing his PlayStation 34.

HTB Chronicills - The "S" Word

Homeless Sweet Homeless

On one of the many days after Harold went to jail, he found himself feeling remarkably peculiar. The earth no longer squished and swayed under his feet. His limbs did not appear distended and freakish. Nor did he have the urge to gouge out walnut sized pieces of flesh from his face. His urine was light yellow and did not emit the vomitous, acrid odor usually associated with all his normal bodily excretions. This gave Harold reason for great concern. A bum may be many things; reckless, indolent, offensive, obtuse, inebriated, awful, barbaric, beastly, desperate, diabolical, fiendish, flagrant, flatulent, gross, hairy, heinous, lazy, monstrous, nefarious, rotten, scandalous, shocking, villainous, wicked or any combination thereof to name a few. However; one thing a bum is not allowed to be under any acceptable circumstance is sober. In reputable bum circles the world over, the condition of sobriety is so reviled that it is only mentioned as “the S Word”, and the only in hoarse whispers.  

No self-reviling bum would be caught dead sober. It was unthinkable. In bum lore there was the legend of Crackhead Tom who was venerated for choosing to eat the lead paint off his holding cell walls rather than be dishonored by temperance. There beside him in stature was Shardella of Chicago, who drank her own urine during 21 months of incarceration in the hope recycling the meth she carried in her bloodstream when booked. The list goes on, but Harold had no time for paying homage to the patron saints of addiction and miscreants. He was horribly, hostilly, and heretically “the S Word.”

With the precision of a finely tuned machine... well, a finely tuned machine in the throes of a gran mal seizure... Harold maneuvered himself to the floor with his head beneath the stainless steel toilet / sink combo thingy and began to rapidly and rhythmically bash his skull into the bottom of the commode like a frenzied woodpecker adorned in an ill-fitting DOC orange jumpsuit. Somewhere between the 7th and 8th impacts, Harold's' world faded into the thick milky blackness of unconsciousness. The 2 remaining brain cells loitering around in the cavernous hollow of Harold's head were reclining on a broken cotton swab tip and passing the time in idle chat:

Brain Cell #1: Whoa! Did you hear that?  

Brain Cell #2: Hear what?

Brain Cell #1: That deafening banging sound.

Brain Cell #2: Uhmmm... What did it sound like?  

Brain Cell #1: Well, sort of like a deafening banging sound, but maybe a bit louder and definitely more deafening. 

Brain Cell #2: Uhmmm... No, I was busy feeding my mildew collection.  

Meanwhile, back in the corporeal world. Harold was still blacked out, groaning, and had managed to soil himself, as well. 

Several hours later, Harold regained consciousness one faculty at a time. What ancient rabbis defined as "nephesh" and Greek philosophers designated "bio" we would loosely call the "living spirit" of a man was the first of his senses to arrive on the scene. Harold realized he was a sentient entity inhabiting a body of some sort. His sense of touch arrived just in time to note the shredding pain emanating from the orbits of his eyes to his maxilla, and touch dropped from consciousness again. Taste and smell arrived simultaneously, but smell was the first to register the thick stench of offal permeating the holding cell. Taste responded in sympathy, generating a gag reflex. The arrival of sight was significantly more problematic. Harold had reverted to monocular vision. His eyes were no longer able to focus as a single organ. One eye focused to the left at 3 feet distance, whilst the other was preoccupied with an insect above and an 2 inches down field. Nauseating vertigo was the unanimous vote of all Harold's senses, with touch abstaining and remaining in unconsciousness.   

The next sense Harold experienced was the clatter of keys against cold steel, and the familiar voice of a corrections officer grumbling something like, "Harowed yermmum pails yurrowed". Harold was considered fluent with all common and many obscure "gutter tongues"; he parlayed in Wino, Jack Daniel's, Methmouth, Opiod, Barbituan, Xanaxian, and at least a dozen others. However; this mumbling voice was incomprehensible. Summoning every fiber of his being he focused like that Kung Fu dude David Carradine in that Kung Fu show called... Uhm... Ah... Whatever the name was. You know, he always carried his shoes but never wore them, and he did all that crazy "Hiiiiya" shit!... And... What was I talking about?   

Oh yeah, summoning every fiber of being he focused both brain cells on deciphering the sound emanating from the hole in the corrections officers face.  

"Harold, your mom paid bail. You're out."  

Harold remained motionless beneath the stainless steel commode for a moment, his cracked, pallid lips moving with the frailties of an octogenarian croaked,  

" What the fuck was the name of that show?"  

That was the question, the essences of all he had endured, the point of his entire felonious existence came down to this... Fuck! What the fuck was it called! Fuck! Man! 

The corrections officer stared blankly. He had no answers, no parables of revelation, or esoteric intonations of satori. Just a blank stare, nothing. 

Harold pulled himself from the floor taking care to minimize the collateral shit cascade within his jumpsuit. He failed. As he hobbled down the cold cinder block corridor with bed roll in hand he...

Come on! What the fuck was the name of that fucking Kung Fu show? No seriously,  the one with the Kung Fu guy with the shoes, doing all that Kung Fu stuff? Fuck!  

The End

(Now can you tell me? Fuck!) 

The boy never looking away from his X-Box game said, "Kung Fu."

"Yeah, that's the one!", Harold exclaimed, "What was it called? "

The boy shrugged, and pondered how long his father had been having these wild, fantastic fits of fancy. He knew better, his teacher had told him, "There is no such thing as a Harold the Bum."

HTB Chronicills - A Good Day

Harold was having a good day. It was only 12:07 AM and he was already wasted. He had started yesterday with a pair of pants, although he couldn't recall where they were, 42 cents, a broken CD of Helen Reddy, The Las Vegas Years, and his trusty rainbow suspenders. That's not much startup capital to work with, but by procuring some top shelf booze for his bottom drawer clientele he had managed to secure himself a small fortune. Small enough to fit neatly into a tiny ziploc baggy. What more could a simple bum ask for? (That's one of those rhetorical question thingies, so shut up).

Harold sat comfortably nodding in and out of hallucination and drug induced stupor on a couch, or maybe it was it a walrus, in his friend's living room. All was well. Yes, all was just fine. He even appreciated the stout pair of flippers his feet had become. Life was good, and then it happened...disaster! 

Disaster like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Disaster like the housing collapse of 2007. Disaster like the 1984 cancellation of Alf. 

Fucking Warren walked into the room.

Harold knew that he had to protect his precious payload which had surely attracted Warren like a  vulture to carrion. Warren was just such a creature; the carp of Harold's narcotics. 

Warren casually chatted with the other derelicts scattered haphazardly about the room, but he was focused on the prey nestled precariously in Harold's pocket. Harold had to take decisive action or all would be lost. OK, maybe just half of it, but it's the principle of the thing. As Warren weaved his way through the remains of many flailings, Harold leapt to his feet with all the grace his stout flippers would afford.

Warren was close now, Harold could make out the pepperoni sized scabs on his countenance. It had obviously been a long night for Warren, but this was no time for sympathy. This was white knuckle for brown stuff time. Harold valiantly launched himself over the coffee table and performed a perfect pirouette with a solid landing on one foot and alternate cheek in an unnerving move that Douglas Fairbanks would never consider. Doug was both sane and occasionally sober.

The voracious opiate reducing beast was nearly upon Harold letting out a snarling cry, "Harold, come on now, let's be reasonable about this." The sound sent a shiver up Harold's spine which someone had replaced with a slinky.

Using the spring action employed by tiggers, Harold sprang himself out of harm's way. Scrambling to his flippers, Harold launched himself into the air and careened through the bathroom door parallel to the floor. With all the elegance of a tornado Harold slammed the door as he simultaneously slammed his skull gracefully into the vanity. Harold had always been an expert slammer.

Harold heard a satisfying thud of Warren hitting the other side of the door where there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But here inside this sanctuary, this refuge, Harold was having a good day.

HTB Chronicills - Bum to the Sun

Harold rolled into his diggle bin (a clothing donation bin) shaped command module. Finally, Harold felt he was getting the recognition he deserved.

Not only was this his own space program, but the very first space program headed up by what the Valley Review called,

"...a blight to every level of humanity from local to global, and now intrastellar."  

And the North Bend City Council passed a nonbinding resolution declaring,

"We hereby resolve that Harold the Bum is a degenerate idiot man-child whose only qualifications are for public assistance programs. Furthermore, we feel that this perplexing space program is only encouraging Harold's rambunctious behavior, and bringing drug addicts from Seattle.  However, we welcome all Harold the Bum and Bum to the Sun related  tourism, and invite you to try the new Bum to the Sun Sundae at North Bend's Dairy Phlegm !

Unanimously Resolved this 23 Day of February, 2014.

North Bend... Easy to Find, but Hard to Swallow

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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer even paid homage to Harold in a Letter from the Editor,

"Those who supported the Bum to the Sun (B2Sun) Space Program ballot initiative were defrauded, bamboozled, and outright lied to by the author of the initiative, Harold the Bum. At a cost of $800 Billion dollars to the Washington taxpayer, thus requiring the shutdown of the entire public school system , health care, elderly care, and the annual Earth Day festivities. The only way to punish Harold the Bum equitably would be to fly him straight into the heart of the sun! As this is the mission plan, the Seattle P-I Supports the Initiative."

Harold couldn't get over all the nice things people had to say about him now that he was about to become a hero. Who would have though Harold would be a Global, no Interstellar blight? Harold began to choke back tears at the thought of being called "qualified” but mainly from the agony of a full bladder. In order to finance the monumental stockpiles of narcotics required for this journey, he had crossed out the BWD budget with purple crayon while none of the suits were looking.

Harold now understood that BWD means Biological Waste Disposal. Oh well, thought Harold, you live and you... learn? Learn? That can't be right. You live and... uh... oh, duh! ...these are the people in your neighborhood, your neighborhood...

Harold had partied epicly the last few days and all that booze was projecting an epic amount of pressure on his wizzer. Luckily, he had consumed nearly all the narcotics for the voyage this morning. That would take the edge off when some important component of his urinary tract ruptured around Mars or Pluto or some shit like that.

The good news was Harold had stashed a teener (1/16th of an ounce) under the flight simulator's dashboard, so that way when it wasn't a simulation he would have it.

Stuff happened and shit and then Harold saw it...the Sun! It was bright as fuck! Kinda' roundish. But definitely bright as fuck. The bright ass Sun was jiggling around and yelling, "Harold!"

"That's fucking cool!", Harold exclaimed, "the Sun must have read the papers too!" Harold waved at the bright ass wobbly Sun, and shouted, "Hi, Sun!"

In his excitement Harold let loose that epic piss, and the Sun choked and faded.

"Holy shit! I pissed the fucking Sun out!" , thought Harold. Then two pair of hands grabbed Harold in a choke hold and yanked him out of the Command Module and down on to what felt like pavement.

"Am I in trouble for pissing out the Sun?" Harold asked nervously, while trying to get his or anyone else's bearings.

"No, Harold!", shouted the furious, urine soaked sheriff wobbling their bright ass flashlights in Harold’s face.

As they cuffed and stuffed Harold for another ride to jail, Harold smiled... Even if it was all a hallucination, he still had that teener stashed under the simulator dashboard.

Quid Pro Quo guarantees made under the B2Sun ballot initiative:

1. All garage door openers that have failed to operate before or after March 31, 1987 will perform nominally.
2. The holocaust will no longer charge a fee.
3. The Belgian army will reissue those silly looking inverted flower pot  helmets used during the Hugonauts campaign.
4. Anyone who has left before the arrival of law enforcement officials will be considered "on ghoul" or "on base" and cannot be tagged out.
5. Fibromyalgia will be renamed, "Grandmawantsoxies"
6. The 1980's science fiction series Space 1999 will be re-aired until every human being acknowledges its existence in writing.
7. Flavors will only be referred to as their assumed flavors. Colors cannot be substituted for a flavor. (e.g. - "Purple drink" is henceforth "grape drink" regardless of actual flavor.)
8. In order to protect the environment, and human health it is forbidden to buy, sell, consume, distribute, manufacturer, use, ignite, pasteurize, sodomize, or take bowling any compound containing Hydrogen Dioxide (H2O).
9. The designation hot cakes, pan cakes, flap jacks, and griddle cakes will continue to be used interchangeably.
10. Japanese animation is hereby banned from Saturday morning television until they agree to a rational plot; and/or/but feature a coyote chasing a road runner in the desert using hilarious contraptions from ACME.