17ce From: dale@unislc.slc.unisys.com (Dale Clark) Subject: VISIT TO DEAD-HEAD TRAILER *YECH* X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL9] Message-ID: <1993May19.231437.14047@unislc.slc.unisys.com> Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 23:14:37 GMT Lines: 97 VISIT TO A DEAD-HEAD'S TRAILER ------------------------------ I have to preface this first. First, I do not wish to offend anyone with my stories, but in the course of my illustrations I am forced to use words which depict the reality of a situation more clearly. I am perfectly aware that many dead-heads have room temperature IQ's, can't multiply more than 12 times 12 in their head without getting sick, and as a result of their inanition from eating foods touted as being for Total Wellness, the size of their popularity matches their pay vouchers. As a consequence I'll probably be inundated with enough obloquy to fill up a moderate-sized hard disk. You know, one of the things I didn't mention were some of the women at the concert. Mark found his girlfriend at a dead concert, if there were girl shows like there are cat shows, her category would have been "Luscious Blond Ditz" and she'd have been a cinch for "Best of Breed." Just looking at her causes the male anatomy to intumesce. Part of the reason I let myself get talked into going was a fruitless hope I might be as lucky. Instead, all I was flooded with were knobby-elbowed, blotchy-skinned hippie women, some of whom had keloids the size of an average 7-11 cookie on their backs. After the show, Mark took me to meet some friends of his girlfriend in LV, who are really into these concerts. The house trailer we went to was just as I imagined it would be. A small, cramped, dingy and undecorated barn of a place with a drippy roof. I was not at all suprised that the place was home to about a dozen scrawny cats and dogs who were free to come and go as they pleased because the doors wouldn't shut. Unfortunately, these animals were as much as the humans the victims of a grossly unsatisfying meal we were offered - a brown broth containing shriveled fungus, and little chunks of something that most closely resembled florist's sponges. It was capped with a floating clump of itchy, bitter, woolly bean sprouts that looked like an unkempt pubic bush. And so, in their desperation for something tasty, the dogs combed around the trailer and their neighbor's yards for carrion, garbage and cat turds. Further enhancing the opulence of this boudoir was the fact that, because health brands of flea and tick shampoo and clove-scented flea collars are completely lame, and the fact that these typical dead-heads were too softhearted to kill insects - the maximum extent of their brutality is either to shoo them away or take them outside with the utmost care, even if it's a wasp - each section of the trailer was infested with fleas and flea eggs, and each beast was the site of a thriving entomological microcosm. Also, as a result of using health-based organic remedies and products - insisting all the while they were just as effective as the stuff Dow Chemical makes - the mildew ran wild. Either that or perhaps one of the members of the Grateful Dead band proclaimed in some song that mold was a sentient being and thus sacred, so they refused on moral grounds to combat it. "Hey." was the only thing the guy could manage to say to me before the speech centers in his brain shut down and he became aphasic. He offered me a limp paw of a handshake. While I was sitting there, trying to watch television through a haze of insects, the wife of 'Barry' I think his name was, offered me a cookie. Seeing me eyeing the bowel-colored discs skeptically, "It's carob." she said, "It tastes just like chocolate." "Sure," I replied, "and monkey piss tastes like bonded bourbon." There wasn't any kind of soft drink in the house and it was hot last Saturday. So I had the choice between water or vegetable juice - home made stuff that was run through their new juicer which excreted a hearty glass of dirt-flavored juice topped with a sparkling tier of dirt-flavored foam. While the heads greeted each gulp with slurping glee, I was gagging from the first sip all the way until the dreadful moment I realized I had just licked away a kale/rhubarb-flavored foam mustache. I had a small bag of Cheetos I grabbed from the car and as I ate each one the dogs would sit and watch me with a mournful look. When I went to give one to one of the dogs, a horrible dog-fight errupted between all three over which one was to receive it. Finally I through down the bag. (One of them happened to be a pit-bull). When I went into the bathroom, I was greeted with a thick, noxious atmosphere from an unflushed toilet. I had to flush three times to empty the huge, beefy, pillars of extrusion into the sewer, which left a gagging pall of death that all but caused the wall-paper to peal. No doubt the result of sundering their bowels with a diet of bulgur and goat's cheese they enjoyed for breakfast. Needless to say, I didn't wish to stay long and I looked at my watch frequently and pointed to the car behind their backs so only Mark could see me. Finally, I recalled an imaginary appointment with an old-time friend back at the hotel, enabling us to withdraw fairly quickly. But it has left an enduring stipple on my mind. Is this the way only a small minority, moderate, or majority of dead-heads live out their lives? Surely in this computerized reticulation it should be possible to take a poll and find out. -- ___________________________________________________________________________ _ _ _ _ _O_ __ __ __ __ | DALE W. CLARK [ dale@unislc.slc.unisys.com ] | | |\ | | (__ \ / (__ | I'm not there because I'm here. If I come `__' | \| _|_ __) _|_ __) | back before I return, I'll ask me to wait. ___________________________________________________________________________ . 0