Hunter S. Thompson Reviews Vegan Bakery

(GONZO is sitting at a table at “Flour Power Vegan Donut Shop & Bakery” as the lights come up, laptop in front of him.)

GONZO

After what was deemed a "fascinating but regrettably un-publishable attempt at journalism" in Las Vegas, I was sent… here.  I am serving what is ostensibly my punishment: write a review for "Flour Power Vegan Donut Shop”.  I’m here with the usual tools of the trade: laptop for my official thoughts, notepad for my actual thoughts, a pen with which to impale thoughts, and a snazzy urban backpack replete with 8 and a half psychedelic mushrooms, 17 flavorful strains of cannabis, 2 Pez dispensers of molly, an eye dropper of ketamine, a toilet paper roll dipped in blotter acid, and a flask of tequila in case I need to puke it all up later.  Vegans. These people are here for the same reason I’m here: something went horribly wrong.  They give up meat to try and diagnose their mismanaged lives, or they indulge in gastric novelties to distract themselves from discovering more things that just don’t matter.  Eat that faux-bacon-studded maple glazed pastry and maybe, for just one more day, something like love is still possible.  As though it is possible to experience love when love encourages you to continue doing the things that make you yourself, the one person in the world you despise more than all those other everything-consumers out there. Eat a vegan éclair or a pistol, and be grateful that no animals were harmed when the American Dream was embalmed with a non-dairy based confection.

How did I end up here?  Let me retrace the steps. 

(SHOP OWNER walks in, also wearing aviators and a vintage print shirt, so GONZO thinks he’s seeing himself)

Oh, there I am walking in… except I didn’t have all those goddamned letters on my forehead. I walked in, and took note of all the ads on the door.  They're all...

Swing dancing

Anarchist rhetoric

Memes

Union protest

Equal rights

Live Music

Acupuncture

DJs

Acting lessons

Meditation,

Social justice

Or SAMUEL ADAMS for short. 

(SHOP OWNER approaches GONZO)

Wait! What are you doing here? We can't just hang out like this.  Get those letters off your forehead, you’llmakeafoolofmyself!

SHOP OWNER

(Takes glasses off)

K… Well, let us know if you need anything!

(Approaches WAITRESS)

Wow! I want whatever donut you gave him!

WAITRESS

He hasn’t had any.

SHOP OWNER

What!? We need him to write a good review!  This decision to distribute through Safeway has been a PR nightmare! That crowd of protesters is growing every day!

PROTESTERS

(Offstage)

DOWN WITH CORPORATE GREED!

DOWN WITH UNFAIR WAGES!

PLUS, SAFEWAY DOESN’T TREAT THEIR EMPLOYEES WELL, SO IF YOU HAVE THEM SELL YOUR DONUTS THEN YOU ARE AN ACCOMPLICE TO INJUSTICE!

OWNER

Their chants are getting more and more convoluted, and they keep putting shit on the door. Go work your magic, get on his good side!

WAITRESS

I’m not sure I like the energy I’m getting from him!  I think he took a roll of our toilet paper… he’s creepy!

SHOP OWNER

He’s not creepy, he’s just… indie!  Go flirt with him!

(DEMON WAITRESS follows WAITRESS and mimics WAITRESS’ actions and repeats what she says in demonic monotone.  DEMON WAITRESS only repeats things that are flirtatious)

WAITRESS

(DEMON WAITRESS repeats)

I like your shirt.  You’re obviously very open-minded and confident in your… masculinity.  Would you like a menu?

GONZO

(Scared out of his mind)

Oh! Uh, OKifyouinsist. 

(Looks at laptop)

Why can't I get online?

WAITRESS

(DEMON WAITRESS repeats)

Oh, it’s that Occupy protest outside!  They’re “occupying” our free WiFi! Heh. Heh. Heh. They’ve also been “occupying” our bathroom.

(She leans in closely to place menu on table)

GONZO

Stop eating me!

WAITRESS

(DEMON WAITRESS repeats)

Hah hah hah, you’re funny!  Here, let me read you our specials.

We have banana glazed crendles, walnut raisinnnn sneaker panda-pads. Chocolate Kenilworth the layperson files. Sticky gender blocks.  Twenty nine-hotdogs, (pointing at him) Cheddar.  Enjehhh memr smems kibbeh? 

GONZO

Kibbeh?

WAITRESS

(DEMON repeat mockingly)

KIBBEHHHHHH tis!

SHOP OWNER

(Disappointed & peeved)

Kibbeh? Rumbut skumplebart.

(SHOP OWNER exits. WAITRESS and DEMON WAITRESS wander, and in the background do evil seductive dancing/motions.)

GONZO

How am I supposed to select a donut in these conditions?  Communication with the outside world is unfathomable! My only connection to reality is my own recorded thoughts and Samuel Adams at the door.  Samuel Adams at the... oh there he is now!

(Enter SAMUEL ADAMS, drunk as hell holding his eponymous beer) 

What do you think of the Occupy movement? Is this the sort of revolution you condone?

SAMUEL ADAMS

Well it seems to be a congregation of confused rebels chanting slanted facts and out of context statistics.  The American Revolution was a bit different… Or was it?  I could have been a passionate orator whose speeches incited a righteous and informed revolution… or maybe I was a propaganda spewing instigator, a manipulator of confused and angry mobs. What’s the difference?

GONZO

For some reason this is not how I imagined you at all.

SAMUEL ADAMS

Not so! You are imagining me right now!  Truth becomes a four-letter word when society forgets how to count.  This is what happens when people learn about you from beer bottles and Jeopardy questions.  The same thing will happen to you!

GONZO

You mean, most people are going to remember nothing of me other than my use of psychedelic drugs?

SAMUEL ADAMS

Frat boys will quote your work to sound smart, just like people offer Sam Adams lager at parties to look classy.  You have no choice so you should embrace it. Also, have you checked your toilet paper?

(SAMUEL ADAMS exits)

GONZO

Good idea, I need another hit.  Where is it?

WAITRESS

(DEMON WAITRESS repeating)

Aren’t you supposed to be writing a review?  We could really use the publicity.

GONZO

(Spastically looking around)

I could really use not being eaten! 

(Swings a fly swatter at WAITRESS until DEMON WAITRESS runs away)  

I think a toilet paper roll might have fallen out of my bag and rolled off somewhere, have you seen it?

WAITRESS

You mean our toilet paper that you stole? I put it back in our bathroom!

GONZO

What!? No, that was- Oh god! Has it been in use?

WAITRESS

You kidding me? With all these protesters coming in, not buying anything and using the bathroom… I put it back 45 minutes ago and it’s already gone.

(WAITRESS exits. While the protesters deliver their lines, GONZO takes mask out of his bag, looks at it for a second, puts it on, exits)

(Offstage)

PROTESTER 1

(Frightened)

Why is this water so far apart?

PROTESTER 2

(Accusingly)

Stop throwing those opinions at me, thought sprinkler!

PROTESTER 3

(Defensive)

Stop looking at me as though I’m sort of your construction site is ruining this neighborhood.com!

PROTESTER 4

Let’s all say “Rup!”

EVERYONE

“RUP!”

PROTESTER 4

Again!

EVERYONE

“RRRRUP!”

PROTESER 4

Thank you!

PROTESTER 5

(Announcement)

If I could. I would eat.  Sand!

End

Surface Tension

This town is full of misters
We scrawl our names on the
wrong side of frosty glasses
Season cycles of perspiration
Evaporated watermarks
recorded on my sleeve

Yeah, we're out again
Regular regulars
Your breath fogs my pane of thoughts
from across the table
I write backwards so you can read them

I must be so ugly
With my rash of condensation
Braille in beads of sweat say nothing
To this special brand of blind
I can only watch them convene
From the window I'm behind
I can only hope
So hard
That they stop falling apart
That they form a drop on
The forehead of your ocean
From where they'd like to start

The Moonburn Cycle

I. Nighttime Indulgence

One sugar-glazed moon gaze earns
Sunday sundae sunburns
Morning dew on a hollow creme brule skull
And the Godfish flops beneath
In search of something wet
Something tidal
An audience for
Its moonlit recital

Tonight's moon is a ray-gun,
turning moon gazers into the sun
Light and warmth trapped in my heart
nomadic, unstrapped, (forget) drift apart
Between my eyes and groin, they pass
I study me through a magnifying glass
Recycled repast for my glowing gains
Fledgling feelings flicker, growing pains
I burn create me

II. Landing

I drift home like snow
Ahead of behind myself
Each crystalline chip lurches forth
like a car with worn brakes,
driven by their very shape,
piled like busted glass pancakes
Melted by the time I arrive
Painstakingly reformed
So designed to be broken
Like a glowstick
Now I see it!









Now I see it!









Now I see it!

Salt Water Heals

I'm the forest, every damned tree
Thousands of miles a blanket of me
My face
terminates
at your rocky shore
Condensation - sap
to seal the gap-
running from an open sore
You are simply the ocean
As helplessly as
I toss timber doubloons
Into your high tide
Only to be promptly returned
With limpest lapping

Your foamy water reaches my roots
exactly
as involuntarily as they draw it in
and all I want to do is die
so my soul can retreat
Instead I grow
smaller
and
smaller
around
your
eroded
feet

Trees know what it is
I just know what it's called
but I can't speak to set my mind at ease
Of what makes me feel warm
as I sit and wait for the salt water to freeze

Second Handers

One day, I got stranded living in the present moment. It happened when I was reading a review of some book by Eckhart Tolle (1) on Amazon.com. I was reading on my bed, my laptop providing the light in my blanket tent. I hadn't slept for a few days due to a high victory of the mind over the body: I was going through a spell of beautiful, beautiful depression. A good book used to put me to sleep but I did not read books anymore, I merely experience and recreate them through other people's explanations. See, reality had long become too cumbersome, and the traditional escapism of internet role playing games held no appeal for me (due in part to the social stigma, but mostly the lingering precariousness of dependence on internet and other escapees/players), so I was on a mission to retreat entirely into my brain. My first step was to internalize sex, which was pretty easy, most people have already done this in one way or another. Food, or specifically, sustenance was the most difficult. I eventually lived on a diet of plain boiled unsalted rice and watch people cook on youtube and imagine what flavor I'd experience with their end product. I prefer youtube because unlike cooking shows on television, people on youtube sometimes end up preparing something awful, just like real life, and they must eat it regardless. Adherence to pleasing fantasies weakens the mind, but creating the nuanced damnation of pineapple-salmon with cream sauce nearly grants the imagination arms and legs to excuse itself from the "table of the body", so to speak. The final hurdle to complete self-immersion was to learn to breathe vicariously, thus conceding all biological functions to the power of my thoughts. I completed that as the oxygen ran out in my blanket tent at the same time I finished reading the book review, and when my Self saw it's polar opposite reflection, it surged out from my body, essentially like I sneezed my psyche inside out. The book review was like pepper in the nose of my brain, its mouth full (having consumed my Self), spewed its contents out into the astral plane where it vanished forever.

Having no Self is difficult. I now assume the moods and emotions of anybody around me, my mind merely a tool for perpetuating wretched reality. Some people go grocery shopping; I walk the streets trying to harvest a pleasant conversation that I can absorb and take home every single day. There's nothing more frustrating than capturing a happy moment that can echo through my empty head and ricochet around my nerveless body all night, only to encounter a downer just before I walk into my apartment, so I am stuck with their agony until I find someone who is at least mildly content. The worst part: if I accumulate pleasant conversations, I become a source of synthetic, nearly pure positivity, which is annoying and slightly depressing to others. My feelings mimic their annoyance and depression, which makes me even more annoying and depressing to be around. So people simply avoid me until my misery makes someone who is less miserable than I am happy that at least they aren't THAT miserable, and I can harness their happiness for myself. The only benefit to being marooned on this incarnate island without my Self is that I save money on rice.

(1) Which one is not important.

Bill Murray Haiku

Garfield devours lasagna

Nibbles at Bill’s

Credibility

What About Bob plus Saw

Baby steps cut off my leg

And get the key

My life is Groundhog

Day plus Momento:

Have we met? Does it matter?

I take my women

The way I take Bill Murray:

No Show? DVD.

Groundhog Day plus Saw:

I tear off my balls every day

‘Til I like it

Some friends and I

Crossed streams onto some marshmallows once

Worst. Smores. Ever.

Noone showed up at

The Dan Aykroyd Crashpad

He’s at my house crying

Jobot’s new crepe

The Royal Tannenbaum

So good, you’ll fuck your sister

Bill Murray is on

The Ghostbusters 3 set in

Apache Junction

Ghostbusters 3 will

Be filmed in my pants starring

My dick as “Slimer”

Crowd-pleasing haiku:

Ghostbusters 3 will take place

At a Chick-Fil-A

Nat'l Poetry Month Day 30: self-swimming

Blurring genres of here-now
What plays in my car?
In my head?
In my head in my car?
Drunk drove through my own windshield
Oh to quench the tap
Speaking of which,
The sky emptied itself
into my self-swimming pool
I am the bugs
Bloated, swirling in the filter
under the weight of their empty sky
Dreaming of what could be there