Friday, August 2nd, 2002 1:05 a.m. Eastern Time “It’s your attorney calling, that was a pretty funny message, did brighten my evening a bit, because I’m on the road trip from hell on Earth, tell you all about it someday when I write my memoirs, Aurgh! I’m losing my mind much like you probably are up there in the woods. It’s 12:30 or 11:30 or 1:30, I don’t fucking know with all these goddamned time changes and shit but we just drove through Chicago highway.. Chicago downtown highway hell on Earth fucking shit craziness madness, trucks breaking down at toll booths, running miles, pushing truck, silliness, fucking insane crazy-NESS, Oh, boy I need a beer, but you know they just don’t sell beer at truck stops, probably a good idea, wouldn’t be good having hundreds of drunk truckers driving up and down the road in the middle of the night.. anyway, via con Dios… “ August 6, 2002 My attorney. Gotta love it. I have an agent and an attorney now, and neither one represents THIS, this crocked, cracked and crumbling career that I yet doggedly struggle to keep afloat despite that in essence, it is the very definition of insanity: the mindless repetition of erroneous behaviors that NEVER, EVER bring anything but the same, stupid results. Two steps forward, 27 steps back. Backpaddling for Jesus. Gopher-tunneling under that Olympian golf course where those vengeful, inbred Greek gods daily pummel the Earth with clubs the size of totem poles, slice and angrily stomp and thrash around in the sand traps like the spoiled brats they are, every last one of them. Anyway, Justin ran off and joined the circus after the local authorities chased his cradle-robbing ass and ME, his naïve and toothache-codeine-stoned accomplice, through the biting-fly infested jungle-forests of Maine. We escaped, naturally. We are, after all, professionals. ARE WE NOT? But he needed cooling off time, understandably. So he stuck out his fat, pseudo-Samoan Sissy Hankshaw thumb and hitched a ride to Whyoming (oh, that’s a rich little typo), and yes, I suppose he’s been asking himself why ever since. And so am i. After all, New England just isn’t the same without that righteous fucker. I come here to see him, Dan, Grandma, and what few relatives I have left who are ON MY SIDE, as it were, in this weird war of what constitutes REALITY. It’s a sad fact that many people I love and respect, whose lifestyle choices, opinions, decisions and mistakes I WOULDN’T THINK of ever debating or patronizingly analyzing with them, feel free to do so with me. So I avoid their company, because life JUST ISN’T LONG ENOUGH to spend a microsecond with people who make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. I am a coward. And I am fragile. ESPECIALLY IN THE COMPANY OF FAMILY I am a low-flying Zeppelin on an army mortar-fire practice range. So, I need people like my cousin, my attorney, people who believe in me and keep me up, who don’t flog my chemically depressed origami heart with SHOULDS and uninvited, inappropriate criticism. And neither do you, any of you. So go. Join the circus. Have hellish highway adventures pushing stalled cars through tollbooths while the whole world laughs at you. In a hundred years we’ll all be dead. I have run my fingers across the thousands of human skulls stacked like bricks in the catacombs beneath Paris, and I assure you that no truer words were ever spoken than those of actor Bill Murray both as Tripper in the slapstick “Meatballs” and Larry Darrel in the tragic & beautiful “Razor’s Edge,” when he said “It just doesn’t matter.” It just doesn’t matter. Therefore, as the Zen master would say, it all matters. So make it good. And stick with those who make you feel good. -RSM Write Me! ©2003 Rick McKinney ALL RIGHTS RESERVED