Archive for the ‘Ken Brady’ Category
Oh! The Places You’ll Go with Google Maps and Drugs!
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Routing…
A. Portland, Oregon
1. Grand adventure is calling! 2. Slide your ass out of bed. 3. Drink a Stumptown or three. 4. Clear IPAs from your head. 5. Gas up the Subie wagon! 6. Put on your old Birks! 7. You’re in Oregon camo. 8. (In the city that works.) 9. Avoid roads with bored cops. 10. (You don’t want to go down.) 11. Stash the weed! Crank some indie! 12. Head straight south out of town.
637 miles later (about 10 hours, 2 minutes):
B. San Francisco, California
1. Cross your choice of big bridges. 2. Pick one – pay the damn toll! 3. Go up and go down. 4. Don’t stop at stop signs – just roll! 5. Go up and go down. 6. Get lost and then again! 7. Do E with a homeless dude. 8. He’ll become your best friend! 9. Good luck finding parking. 10. (Though it helps some to pray.) 11. Kick the homeless dude out. 12. And head south to L.A.
381 miles later (about 6 hours, 26 minutes – up to 7 hours, 50 minutes in traffic):
C. Los Angeles, California
1. Oh! The freeways and cloverleafs! 2. Lots of lights! Lots of cars! 3. Oh! The silicone breast implants! 4. Lots of strip clubs and stars! 5. Don’t turn down the wrong roads. 6. Never trust a valet. 7. Careful snorting while driving. 8. Buy a hands-free coke tray! 9. Party at clubs with ridiculous covers. 10. Drive like you’ve got the heart of a beast! 11. Avoid being on a reality show. 12. Onward, the desert awaits to the east.
792 miles later (about 12 hours, 19 minutes):
D. Albuquerque, New Mexico
1. Take that left turn. 2. (You know that you want to!) 3. Make fun of the town’s name. 4. Just where no one can hear you. 5. It’s a good place for business. 6. And for jobs (Forbes says so). 7. But they drive like they have 8. Nowhere special to go. 9. So just drink some peyote. 10. View the great color fountain! 11. See hot air balloon fiestas. 12. Then head on up the mountain!
449 miles (about 7 hours, 11 minutes):
E. Denver, Colorado
1. Celebrate that you’re here! 2. Your adventure is done. 3. Drink beer and get stoned. 4. Pretend you’re in Oregon! 5. It’s the Mile High City. 6. Snow’s a beautiful scene! 7. Reflect on your adventure. 8. All the places you’ve been! 9. You’ve had traffic and parking. 10. Yes, at times you were vexed. 11. But it’s your destination! 12. Where will you go next?
Loss Leader
Friday, April 9th, 2010
They always sell you on the anal probes to bring you in, but when it comes time for the pay-off it’s all crap.
“Bunks are here,” our guard says. His gray jumpsuit and cheap mask with big eyes don’t hide his African facial features or accented English. “I can tie you up if you want and make scary sounds. Whatever. Bathroom’s down that corridor. Please leave it clean. See you at six.”
He walks through an unseen door in the smooth metal wall, leaving me with several other barefoot men and women in pajamas or robes. They wander the room, check out bunks, a viewscreen of Earth. A burly hippy finds a panel and punches buttons, pretending to fire lasers and making “pew-pew” noises.
“What now?” says one woman who hasn’t moved. She’s never done this before. I check her out. Pretty brunette, maybe thirty, silk pajama top and bare legs.
“It’s cool,” I say. “Get through the night. Tests and stuff will happen tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.”
I envy her. In the early days it was exciting, a real adventure. Whisked away in the dead of night by strange creatures, locked in a spaceship, subjected to experiments. Bright lights, good old anal probes. The inevitable return to Earth with a story no one believed, and – if the aliens felt sorry for you – a bona fide Secret of the Universe to hold up as a badge of honor.
Back when being abducted meant something. First time one of those Secrets turned out to be a lucrative retail product everyone wanted to be abducted. The aliens got overwhelmed with the task and outsourced abductions to the Nigerians. Had alien suits made by the lowest bidders in China.
The door slides open, which makes me guess we’re in a real spaceship, not a warehouse in Schenectady, and the guard comes in. He makes a bee line for the hippy gamer.
“Hey,” he says. “Stop playing with that.”
“Oh, sorry, man. When do we get our secrets of the universe? The brochure promised, right?”
“Sure,” says the guard. He sighs, looks overworked and tired. He opens his jumpsuit and takes out eight small plastic cards, gives one to each of us. He turns and leaves.
“What?” says the hippy, reading. “Enlarge your penis size with miraculous new drugs?”
The others read their cards. Invest in Latvian real estate. Make millions from home just sending emails. Free merchandise from Walmart.
“Shit,” the brunette says. “I’m here in my PJs to be introduced to a wealthy foreigner who needs to move millions of dollars from his homeland?”
Mine is a simple suggestion of which low cap stocks to buy. I drop the card.
That clenches it for me. No more alien abductions. Anal probes be damned. Next year I’m going to Mazatlan.