The Gospel of St. Patrick

So, I've been thinking about this St. Patrick business, and everyone always thinks of him as being Sainted for driving all the snakes out of Ireland.

Really? How hard is that?

It's Ireland. It's muddy, cold, and wet. Snakes are exothermic. They don't dig on that shit.

The scene probably went something like this:

ST. PATRICK: Feck off, Snakes!

SNAKES: Right, OK.

SNAKES EXEUNT

End of play.

If St. Patrick wanted to impress me, he should drive all the snakes out of the Yucatan! That'd be impressive.

More than likely, in proper Irish storytelling tradition, I think that the Story of the St. Patrick Driving out the Snakes should go like this.

ST PATRICK: Feck off, Snakes!

SNAKES: Good plan, Pat! We're with ya! Could you take us?

ST. PATRICK: What?

SNAKES: It's an awful long way, you know, and we don't have feet. We also can't hitch a ride because we've no thumbs. So, could give us a lift? Say, to somewhere in Anglesy. From there, we can take British Rail to Dover, and then head to the South of France where it's warm, and we can be with our close cousins, the French.

ST. PATRICK: Arse! You've thought this through, haven't you?

SNAKES: What else are we going to do? We're snakes in Ireland! It's fecking cold, ya Mick Bastard!

"...So did St. Patrick heed the word of the snakes, and Rentest he a Holy Tour Bus,

And gathered he all the snakes together, and placed them into the Holy Tour bus,

And then drivest he all the serpents to Anglesy, (yes, yes...I know there's water in the way. Shut up, it's a bloody parable for Chrissakes!)

But the snakes, alak, haddest they no wallets...for like Nicole Richie, they had no hips to hold them up, and they felt funny using one another as belts, so not a wallet, or a farthing had they. So, stiffest they St. Patrick on bus fare...

St. Patrick, being a noble and proper Irishman, did the only proper thing, and went he to the nearest Public House to bitcheth loudly about his rotten luck.

Walketh he into the Public House of which he was a regular, at which all present shouted "Pat!" as they would have had George Wendt instead entered.

Then, seeing his saddened state, asketh they, "Prithee, Patrick, who didst pyss in thine Cheerios this morrow?"

"The fecking snakes!" answerest he, "For I just returned from driving all of the snakes out of Ireland and..."

"Thou drovest all the snakes from Ireland?" all present exclaimed, interrupting St. Patrick.

"Well, Aye! 'Tis true. You see, I told them to feck off and..."

"Divine Defecation, Man!" sayeth those present, interrupting once again, "For this is truly a miracle! Thou shouldest be Sainted."

"No, wait," interjecteth Patrick, "'Twas not all that. What happened was..."

"We shall sing thy praises!"

"No, really...Listen..."

"And ye shall drink for free in this Public House henceforth..."

"Yes...Well," sayeth St. Patrick, "As I said, I gave those slimy, reptilian bastards what for!

"I told them, 'Feck off, Snakes!' and they didst flee before me..."

And the moral of the story; Never buy into the bullshite of a Mick Bastard, (including this one,) when someone else is paying.

Here Endeth the Lesson..

Forgetting 9/11

No, the title isn't a plea or a request or even an admission.  And I think this post will be completely devoid of my usual humor and satire.  I don't want to offer any advice, or instruction, or urge anyone to go out and protest, or attend a memorial, or enlist in the military to shoot some towelheads, or call for ethnic cleansing against Muslims, or write to their congressmen, or burn some books.

There's tons of that already.  Do what you feel is the right thing to do.

I will also refrain from my usual NC 17 language for the entirety of this post.  Not particularly because I consider this a solemn occasion, but because there has been enough utterly deplorable filth already associated with 9/11, its aftermath, and the commentary thereof.  I don't feel the need to add to that, (see first paragraph for examples.)

No, the title of this post is a statement of impossibility:  Forgetting 9/11.

I see posts on other blogs, in newspapers, in sig files:  "Never Forget."  "Always Remember," "I Won't Forget"  "I'll Always Remember," and the more disturbing "Never Forgive."

I don't think we need the reminders.  I think we all know.  I don't think we could forget if we wanted to.

There are certain events in our lives that are permanently etched into us.  They burn their way into our memories, and leave scars just like a hot poker to our flesh.  They carry more "Gravity" and we orbit around them.  Audrey Niffenegger uses that as a science-fiction-like trope for her protagonist Henry DeTamble in her novel "The Time Traveller's Wife," but it's a metaphor too.  We ALL do it.  We ALL revisit the same events over and over in our memories.  Dad's acquaintance and fellow fictional character, Billy Pilgrim did much the same thing in Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," spending the rest of his life time travelling to the events he saw unfold as a prisoner of war during the bombing of Dresden, (which was once again a metaphor for my grandcreator, Kurt Vonnegut's inability to escape the gravitational pull of those Dark Matter Days he spent there.)

We ALL remember EXACTLY where we were when we heard the news, just as everyone from the previous generation remembers EXACTLY where they were in November of 1963 when they heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

I remember where I was.  I was standing in the library of the high school I had graduated from years before, watching the towers fall on live television.  The irony for me was that I was standing there watching the whole thing unfold with a man who I had stood beside at the top of those very towers almost a decade before.  It was all so surreal.

I've heard it in conversations with people over the last week or so:  "9th Anniversary...Hard to believe...Has it been that long?"

Yes, it's been that long...It's been longer in many ways.  Some people can't even remember what the New York Skyline looked like with the towers.  Some people can't remember what it was like not to live in a world where "Terrorism" wasn't just something that effected OTHER countries. 

In my previous rants, (blog entries, posts, whatever you want to call them,) I have  likened the American Socioeconomic machine to a vast organism.  I'm not the first guy to do this.  Thomas Hobbes wrote about it in his "Leviathan."  But it is a good model, and I think we can understand and grasp things a little easier with that analogy.  

I was considering likening 9/11 on a microcosmic scale to battling cancer, (something that the non-fictional side of D. Gilbert Trout has witnessed a bit too much in the last 3 years.)  But that doesn't exactly fit.  

I considered likening it to a being shot in a vital organ, but that doesn't exactly work either.  Being shot in a vital organ is an act of willful violence, sometimes random, but usually willful.  I would liken a gunshot wound on a macrocosmic scale to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of '41.

I've decided that microcosmically, 9/11 was more like the Leviathan organism that is US being attacked by a mad dog.

It came out of nowhere.  Sure, there were signs.  The dog had been growling for a while, and we KNEW there was a potential situation brewing, but the attack itself was sudden, violent, and damn near killed us.  It went right for the jugular with the intent of chewing out our central nervous and cardiovascular systems, (the economic and legislative centers of the country.)  It didn't have a gun like Japan.  All it had were teeth, claws, and pent up rage that exploded in an almost random act of violence.

Yeah, there's a lot of argument from conspiracy theorists about 9/11 being an inside job, or that there was previous intelligence and the events COULD have been stopped, but to give George W. Bush's administration credit, (which is NOT something you will hear from me very often,) how CAN you plan for things like that?

If I reported to the police that tomorrow a car full of midgets dressed as clowns was going to drive into the town square, jump out of the car singing "Jingle Bell Rock," and then proceed to mow down all bystanders with sub machine guns, I don't think they'd take it seriously.

So, a bunch of pissed off guys armed with boxcutters are going to hijack some planes and kamikaze crash them into our centers of government and commerce?

That's not an intelligence report.  That's the plot to a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

I think it can only be taken seriously in retrospect.

I likened the terrorists, (Al Qaeda in this case,) to a mad dog.  How do you negotiate with a mad dog?  When the aggressor is another macrocosmic person, (i.e. Japan, which is itself a DIFFERENT Macroorganism Person, complete with it's own organ systems and structure,) it's easy...You declare war.  The fight has already started, and you just keep your head down, your fists up, and keep going until you're dead, or the other guy is dead, or one or the other of you backs down.

But Al Qaeda is NOT a government.  It doesn't have any "Official Representation"  Sure, it might have support, but it's still like a mad stray dog.  It might sleep under Afghanistan's porch.  It might eat table scraps left for it by Iraq, but can either of those Sociopolitical Organism's actually CONTROL it?  Probably not.  It does not heel.  It does not obey.  All it understands is pain and abuse, and has been conditioned to respond with pain and abuse.

All you can really do with a mad dog is put it down.  Put it out of its misery.  Sure, there is the option of "rehabilitation," but reported success rates there are questionable.

So, We as an Organism survive the attack.  We have to rehabilitate.  We fight off the infection.  Our immune systems grow stronger.  But forever burned into our psyches is the memory of that attack.  We orbit it in our minds.  Moments of synchronicity cause us to flash back to it.  And worst of all, we develop a huge phobia toward dogs.

We berate dog owners.  We call for bans on specific breeds.  And we lash out.

We don't think about what made the dog crazy to begin with;  The beatings, the abuse, the starvation.

The Middle East has been our kicking ground for years.  We didn't want a damn thing to do with them until we needed oil, and then we go in and take it.  If we don't take it outright, we set up puppet governments with "friendly folks" at the the top who will give us oil, and we really pretend not to notice when they abuse and neglect their citizens. 

THIS is what makes the mad dogs.

It's really too late to stop too.  The damage is done.  You can't placate a rabid animal.  You can't really expect their owner to control it.

All we can REALLY do is be wary of mad dogs, and be prepared to defend ourselves the next time we encounter one.

We won't forget.  We can't forget.  We're the walking wounded, we flinch every time a dog barks.  We answer their aggression with aggression.  Aggression that makes MORE mad dogs.

And so it goes...   

Urintopia: Where "One for the Road" could help you on the road.

I'm a big fan of scatological science, and it amuses me greatly when hard science shows us just how deluded we can be.
Now, I've know about this for a while, or at least, the Non-Fictional half of me has known about this for at least a year before he invented the fictional person who now writes this brief missive.

Here, we once again get into that idea of truth versus Truth.  Because the Truth is that our reliance on petroleum is an addiction.  My paternal GrandCreator, (that is the man who created the character of my father, Kilgore, not the Grand Creator of the Universe, but just a self-effacing, shabby, chain-smoking old man named Kurt Vonnegut, Jr,) once wrote:  "We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial.  And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get whatever is left of what we're hooked on."

Ain't that the truth?  Two wars in recent history, a deliberate destabilization of the Middle East, and Saudi princes living like pimps and pushers while the people they rule starve in the streets.

Petroleum is king, and you can't escape from that.  We're running out of it.  Getting it destroys the environment, (look at the mess BP has made of the Gulf.  Look at the mess we've made with the military in another Gulf, and take a drive through any town that ISN'T Huntington or Charleston in West-By-God Virginia! (There's a great modern folksong I've heard about the strip mining industry in the state.  One of the lyrics is "West Virginia, Almost Level...")

Using it kills us too.  Petroleum pollutes the air, runs off into our groundwater that we grow our crops from, fills our landfills with shit that will be there long after our species has committed collective suicide, and causes irreparable damage to our ecosystem.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke up your ass.  They're PR Spokesperson spin doctors who should be forced to live down stream from a petrochemical plant, because I guarantee you their kids never had to have "Shelter in Place" drills at their schools.  I grew up in an area along the Ohio River where steel mills were replaced throughout the 60's and 70's with chemical plants.  Ashland Oil was right there in Ashland Kentucky, but then they moved away and took their jobs with them, (so, if Ashland Oil isn't in Ashland anymore, then who are they?)

The people once employed by Ashland Oil and the plethora of steel mills are NOW employed by companies like Dow Chemical, Aristech, and a handful of others.  The two biggest employers in that entire section of the Ohio Valley are chemical refineries and large hospitals.  They are the biggest industries, because when you're a big corporate healthcare company, you build hospitals where the sick people are.  That section of the Ohio Valley happens to have one of the largest concentrations of cancer patients in North America.

Now, a good amount of that admittedly is cultural.  Smoking, drinking, and ESPECIALLY diet trends in that area certainly lean toward high cancer rates, but it's not ALL from that.

People who live in the region cheer when a new petrochemical plant is being built.  The state and local governments offer tax cuts to the corporations that own them, and sometimes look the other way when a health hazard comes up to smooth things over.  There's a spill, and locals threaten to sue or push for higher regulations.  The corporations say that the extra costs involved will make it impossible to keep the plant open, so those wronged are pressured to quit bitching for the "Good of the Community."

And so it goes.

People go to work every day to make the chemicals that kill them, their neighbors, and their children so they don't die of starvation or exposure because they can't afford food and shelter.  They trade a quick death for a slow, painful one.


And so it goes.

If we step away from the scene...Just sort of go "One Step Up" in our little macrocosm.  If we look at our species as a whole...As one gigantic organism in which we're just cells within organ systems within a Gestalt Organism...I have a feeling, the big "Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan" looking thing that is "Us-on-a-Grand-Scale" would look like a junkie on the street.  It's killing our cells, but our central nervous system, (our government structures, local and national,) want more NEED MORE!  Their commerce and livelyhood depend on it.  But it's killing off individual cells.  We KNOW this.  The Central Nervous system knows it, but it's still craves more.  It sends mixed signals down the wires to the individual cells, (us,) through the nervous system, (the media.) 

We're euphoric over it:  Monster truck rallys, Nascar, our lust for Hummers, Hemi's and more fucking horsepower, (and I think it's not a coincidence that the brand name for the civilian version of the military HUMVEE is also slang for a blowjob.
  
Sure, we do things to make ourselves FEEL better.  We car pool.  We drive hybrids, (the smug asshole solution,) We boycott BP, (a futile gesture, as they don't really give a shit.  They'll sell their oil to SOMEONE.  In fact, growing up where I did, I often saw, and STILL see BP trucks filling the tanks of Speedways, Sunoco's, and little mom-and-pop stations.  Conversely, I've seen John Clarke Oil trucks filling up BP stations, so good luck finding out where that gas comes from.)  But when it all boils down to it, we're not really ADDRESSING the problem.  We're just stepping down from Smack to Morphine to lessen our DT shakes.

The big buzzwords right now are that we need to "Lessen our dependence on foreign oil."  That's the SAFE way for Politicians to appease the Ecological Minded while not pissing off General Motors, but the solution is not "Drill Baby, Drill" in the last few areas of our continent that have managed to remain free of the cancer that is American Industrialization.  That quoted from the vapid bimbo that was almost our Vice President, (you know, Dad downed a Drano cocktail on my 30th birthday when he discovered that Bush and Cheney would spend another term in office.  Political parties aside, if that airhead would have gained the "Runner Up" seat behind a man who could kick over at any moment.  I might have had a Liquid Plumber for Last Call as well.)

We need to lessen our dependence on oil PERIOD.

Yeah.  So, what's the fucking point here?  I've railed about this shit for a bunch of paragraphs now, just like every other blogger, political commentator, armchair politician, and douchebag on the street.

Well, here's my point.  And it's so ridiculous, you know you HAD to hear it from a guy who's only half real.  But I swear to you that THIS is one of those Truth's I've been talking about, and here it is:

We learn to piss gasoline.

"No shit" you say?

Yes, Shit!

Shit, Urine, general biological waste water.  It should work just fine.

Take a look-see here, then come back  I'll still be here:

http://www.ohio.edu/research/communications/e3.cfm

Are you done?  Good.  I'll assume you read the whole thing as instructed.  If you haven't you'll be kinda lost.  Fair warning. 

I got to meet Dr. Gerardine Botte a little over a year ago, before e3 Technologies was around, and when this technology was still in the planning stages.  I sat wide eyed with a grin on my face as she explained the whole process, (simplified, of course for us liberal arts folks,) while these little plastic cars ran around a stage, nothing powering them but lab-simulated piss.


The deal goes like this.

One of the problems with fuel cels is they use up USEFUL water.  Yeah, we have oceans full of the stuff, but we have to desalinize it, and the energy we put into doing that AND breaking it down into it's component two-hydrogen-one-oxygen-atoms-per-molecule becomes a diminishing return on the energy that a hydrogen fuel cel can draw from it.

That, and in places like the West Coast of California and the deserts of Nevada, where consumable water is already a scarce commodity, and power consumption is EXCEEDINGLY high, this creates an even BIGGER drain on their non-existent reserves.

So, Dr. Botte and her associates thought, "What about waste water?"

Waste water like we'd find from animal waste and sewage is stuff we can't exactly consume.  It's polluted.

Polluted with what?

Ammonia!

What is the chemical make-up of Ammonia?

NH3:  Three parts hydrogen to one part of Nitrogen!  33% more hydrogen than we get from water electrolysis alone.

If we break down the water and the ammonia dissolved in it, we get hydrogen for the fuel cels and the by-product is breathable oxygen and nitrogen that can potentially be used as a fertilizer!

As I said, I got to meet Dr. Botte a little over a year ago, and she's a delightfully brilliant woman.  I played with the pee-powered cars, (though I never had the opportunity to actually piss in one of the little fuel tanks to see if it would work, but I'm pretty sure that it would have.)

Let me just say this just one more time because it's so mind-bogglingly simple:

This woman is making automobiles that run on piss.

And we go into orgasmic frenzy when Steve Jobs announces that the iPhone 4 will let you change your fucking screen background?

We applaud GM for making SUVs that finally top 30MPG?

Let's get some fucking perspective here!

THIS IS BRILLIANCE.

THIS IS INNOVATION. 

I draw this to your attention because THIS is how we can REALLY make a difference.  THESE are the kind of steps we need to be taking to quit this addiction cold turkey.

I have no idea if e3 LLC will be offering any type of public stock anytime soon, but I can tell you that I'll be waiting in line when they do.

Not only because it's what we need to do as a species, but also because rather than saying "I'm investing in solar or wind-power technology,"  I want to say, "I support waste technology."  Because when waste becomes valuable, I'll be a rich man.

Because I'm full of it!

And so it goes...

An Introduction to D. Gilbert Trout's "WikiNation"

Greetings gentle reader, and welcome to D. Gilbert Trout's “WikiNation.”

I truly believe that mankind likes fashioning his creations in his own, flawed image, and as Wikipedia has become the de facto source for valid, truthful, and well documented information, (as far as the college freshman and sophomores I spent the greater part of a decade attempting to teach were concerned,) I feel that it is an excellent example of this human tendency.

It should be no surprise then that Wikipedia should be as truncated, contested, schizophrenic, and confusing as its creators. Our culture has collectively and individually become obsessed with voicing our version what is factual, and this blog is not only a commentary upon this trend, but also a unrepentant example of it.

“So, what's this all about?” you may ask yourself. Well, a little about me. You can read the Cliff Notes version here somewhere...Probably at the top or off to the left or right side, depending on if you're reading this on Facebook, or a Blog, or wherever the hell all I decide to whore myself out, but that doesn't really tell you the whole story. The whole story is far more complex than this.

My biological father was the late author, Kilgore Trout. A little background on him, so you get an idea of the nature of my genetics:

Dad spent most of what you could call a “Career” as a science fiction writer. More specifically a less-than-successful science fiction writer whose work was mostly published in the type of magazines that one does NOT purchase for the articles, (for the more thick among you, the word “Porn” should alleviate any ambiguity.) In all, the collected volumes of his work are said to comprise about 117 novels, (though I'm only aware of 18 of them....19 if you count “Venus on the Halfshell” which was written by Phillip Jose' Farmer, but published under Dad's name,) and over 2000 short stories, (my count, once again, is significantly lower,) as well as at least one play, and a personal memoir.

As to Kilgore's life BEYOND his work, I know very little. He had one other son, Leon Trotsky Trout, (named after the Russian Revolutionist, for Father Dear, like so many novelists of the 60's had some blatant Socialist leanings.) Leo ran away from home when he was 16, and died suddenly in 1986. Kilgore apparently did some military service in the Marines prior to his career as an author, as well as some prison time during it.

Beyond that, I know that there were some untrue rumors of his death in both '81, and '94, but after consulting an alleged psychic and learning that George W. Bush would indeed defeat John Kerry and serve a second term in the Oval Office, he chose to end his own life on October 15^th, 2004 by drinking Drano.

I never met Kilgore, and he never met me. To my knowledge, the only offspring he was aware of was Leon, and in truth the odds of us ever meeting face-to-face were rather slim to begin with due to three important factors.

#1) My mother's rather unique relationship to Kilgore.

#2) Kilgore had been dead a number of years before I became aware that he was indeed my biological father.

And most IMPORTANTLY,

#3) Kilgore Trout is a fictional character who was invented by the late author, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Vonnegut first created Kilgore as a rather transparent, (and somewhat unflattering,) riff on his friend and fellow writer, Theodore Sturgeon. But as time went on and Kilgore appeared over and over again in Vonnegut's fiction, sometimes in passing, but oft times as a major or even MAIN character through which the story was told in first-person narrative.

Kilgore became Vonnegut's cypher; a character through which Vonnegut could himself APPEAR in his own fiction, (though in Vonnegut's “Breakfast of Champions,” Vonnegut does LITERALLY make an appearance and meets his alter-ego, Kilgore Trout.)

So, how is this fictional man my father?

My answer to that is simple. In the early 1970's, my mother, an avid fan of Vonnegut's work, wrote a short piece of erotic fiction that featured a “Mary Sue” version of herself involved in a brief, but coital tryst with Vonnegut's famous character. 9 months later, I was born. The act that resulted in my birth might well have been scandalous back then, but it happens all the time these days. Don't believe me? I DARE you to Google the words “Twilight Fan Fiction” (I just did for the sake of this article. I wouldn't ask you to do it unless I was willing to myself. Just don't look TOO deep, ESPECIALLY not anything marked “Slash” This stuff is not only NSFW, it's also “Not Safe For Human Consumption!” You've been warned.) However, I believe I am alone as the only half-fictional offspring to result from such a piece of questionable literature.

So, what does being half-fictional mean?  Well, it doesn't exactly MEAN anything, but to anyone who knows me, it will explain a lot.  You read about fictional characters whose lives are so colorful.  They have great, grand adventures, great grand tragedies, and are able to make some rather boisterous claims.  Well, I can tell you that the realization that I was half-fictional came as no revelation.  I mean, LOOK at some of the bizarre things that my life has lead me to be involved in: 

-I was an off-Broadway performer in New York before I was 16.

-I have been shot with a 9mm pistol.

-I've been personally escorted to my office by members of the Secret Service.

-My name has appeared on a number of Government Watch and No-Fly Lists.

-Like Leonardo Da Vinci, I can write backwards more legibly and more quickly than I can write forwards.

-I have willfully and with malicious intent hit people with my car, (and not “bumped” either. I mean “accelerator TO THE FLOOR!”)

-I once briefly lost my drivers license for playing chicken with a woman who was 8.5 months pregnant. She ended up swerving at the last minute, (HA! Pussy!) careening through someone's yard and smashing into a concrete porch.  I kept on driving, because that's what I decided was best, as there was no reason for the van-load of about 14 high-school kids I was driving around to clutter up the scene of an accident, they carted Preggo Knievel off to the hospital..Don't worry the baby was fine. Yay, Airbags!)

-I've had an affair with the partner of a good friend and colleague.

-I “left a poo” in the crypt in St. Pauls' Cathedral in London.

-I've been chased by and successfully evaded police in Tijuana, Mexico

-I spent an entire day sleeping, people watching, and holding conversations with absolute strangers in the Las Vegas International Airport simply because I could.

-I have experienced close encounters with what can only be described as “Aliens”

-I once had to have an insane woman removed from my roof by the police at 2:30 in the morning in the pouring rain.

-Friends and I built a functioning siege engine in one afternoon in a back yard with felled trees, minimal power tools, no previous experience building siege engines, and no plans.

-I've covered up the sexual escapades of local TV personalities when I worked in television, because I was involved in them.

-I was involved in a fight in a movie theater parking lot where I almost shivved a kid for making too much noise during the movie.

Now, I'll be honest here for a minute. A small number of the above are bold-faced lies. MOST of them however are ABSOLUTELY factual, and folks who know me can instantly pick out a number of them, as they were there when they happened. But even they might have to stop and consider which ones might NOT be true. In addition to this, the bits that are absolutely factual are presented above without the context in which they occurred. Context is SO important.

But truth is abstract, especially in this day and age. That's not to say that Truth does not exist. In fact, that's what I'm searching for in writing this.

That's what I want to share with you: Truth.

But please don't confuse truth with Truth. truth isn't as powerful as Truth. truth requires Facts. Truth does not.

Example: Fact. The fossil record indicates that dinosaurs were extinct for over 60 million years before mankind turned up on the scene. But try to tell that to people who support Intelligent Design education in schools. They're not looking for truth. They're looking for Truth, and no matter what facts you give them, that would change the Truth of the dinosaurs sharing the Earth with Antediluvian Man to the truth that it was a massive climate change which wiped out the dinosaurs that allowed the large brained mammals to survive to proliferate and fill the void to BECOME the Man that they think was riding a brontosaurus around like Fred Flintstone.

You're not going to convince Creationists of that any more than you're going to convince Liberal Democrats that George W. Bush LEGITIMATELY won the Presidential Election against Al Gore in 2000. Shut up. Quit trying.

It seems that our world has become a sea of Truth, because EVERYONE is right, and so EVERYONE ELSE is wrong, and in this wonderful age where the sum total of information pertinent to our society is only as far away as the nearest Wi Fi node, and that the raw information and data the Web contains are being mistaken for facts, that's not going to change any time soon.

So we're left in isolated little digital worlds of absolute Truth, were Conservatives, Liberals, Evangelicals, Muslims, Israelis, Tea Partiers, Birthers, 420 Advocates, Edwardists, Jacobites, and Conspiracy Theorists huddle around their little bonfires of Truth, and then grab their pitchforks and torches lit with Truth, and spread their myopic view of the world TO the world, whether the world wants it or not. Forget the facts, forget the proof. TRUTH doesn't need those.

It may seem like I'm a bit down on facts, but facts have their more pleasant aspects as well.

The facts do not support my claim that Kilgore Trout is my father. The facts say that my father was a hard working man who married my mother, raised me, and still maintains a happy, loving relationship with D. Gilbert Trout, his biological son..

The facts indicate that my mother wrote no such erotic fan-fiction. Hell, I really don't even know if she has anymore than a remote recognition of the name Kurt Vonnegut, Jr let along his fictional creation that we share a surname with.

The facts say there was no carnal tryst, no infidelity, no bastard offspring, (the evidence does support, however that the resulting offspring grew up to be a bastard in a figurative sense, if not a literal one.)

The simplest explanation is that I've decided to ride the coat-tails of a famous author, and am just as much a nom-de-plume-stealing hack as Phillip Jose' Farmer, who records show that Vonnegut was not entirely impressed with.

The simplest explanation is that a guy, unhappy with his limited success, staring down the barrel of middle age finally decided that he's had enough of the bullshit being peddled on mainstream and alternative media that is being marketed as Truth, and has decided, in no uncertain terms, that he is going to do his little part to counter that Bullshit-as-Truth by whoring out his own Truth-as-Bullshit to anyone who will listen, read, consume, and pass on.

I'm going to tell you something right up front about the articles that will appear here. At least half of the things that I'm going to say here are going to be fiction. However, Lies are not without their merit. There's an old saying that a politician uses lies to CONCEAL the Truth, while an entertainer uses lies to REVEAL the Truth.

And let's face it, if you get your news from CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, C-SPAN, BBC, or Fox/Newscorp, you should damn well be used to being fed a steady stream of bullshit. At least I have the decency to tell you up front. As a professional liar, I can also add that a Rat can smell his own. So, I think I can honestly say that I am in good company here, and what you read here is as TRUE as anything you might find there.

It's become apparent in recent years that this nation has become extremely polarized. But people seem to think that must mean that it's divided right down the middle, and EVERYONE is on one side or the other...it's not about just TWO sides. There's THOUSANDS of sides, and all of them seem to have gone bug-shit crazy.

This is NOT a struggle that is JUST about Secularism vs. Sectarianism, Conservative vs. Liberal, Rich vs. Poor, Christianity vs. Islam, Caucasian vs. Negro, (no, I will NOT use “African American” here, as there are black people OUTSIDE the Americas. Contrary to what a girl said in an undergraduate class I was once in, Black people in Europe are NOT African Americans too, and it's indicative of this stupid-assed, “Americentric” PC Ignorance that we in the US so smugly sit behind, pretending to be so inclusive and superior over!) This is about little groups of people joining together and picking a group they consider to be their antithesis, and verbally denouncing any value, belief, or contribution of “The Other.”

Back in the 60's and 70's, when Vonnegut was writing fiction to be a reporter of Truth, another writer, Hunter S. Thompson was reporting Truth by fictionalizing. Hunter's “Gonzo” journalism of “Dr. Raoul Duke” is sort of a backwards version of what I am doing, and I think that's quite fitting.

“D. Gilbert Trout” is NOT a pseudonym, it's not a pen name, it's not an assumed identity. The name is right there on my fucking birth certificate. But at the same time, “D. Gilbert Trout” is at least semi-fictional. “D. Gilbert Trout” is a mask. But the while the criminal USES masks to conceal, the performer uses them to reveal, and to separate the crooks from the performers, all you have to do is look who is stealing your money and dreams. The media and the politicians are robbing you blind of both. Writers and performers are trying to give their dreams away.

Scratch that last bit. I DO believe it, but I'm getting obscure. If I'd written that by hand, it would have been with a swishy quill-penned flourish that would make Oscar Wilde cream his pink frilly breeches. I promise I'll try to avoid that. I respect you too much. I'll keep it as real as a half-fictional guy can.

No, what I want to say here is different. I don't want to report blatant bullshit the way the Onion does, (and I do so LOVE it when both Conservatives and Liberals alike find something on there to make their next GIGANTIC social stand over and then form useless Facebook petition polls that they forward to EVERYONE and their fucking brother to sign! It's not true folks. It's satire. Brilliantly FUNNY satire. It's more of that “Information being Mistaken for Knowledge” I was talking about earlier. Welcome to WikiNation! Hey...There's a new documentary for Brandon Scurlock. I'll have to pitch it to him over our weekly lunch date at McDonald's!)

It's not news. I don't even want to call it editorial, (that would imply some editorial skill on my part,) It's not social commentary, or satire, or propaganda. It's a call for all of us to consider the possibility that truth might not be what we know the Truth is, or what They think it is either...

That's, the royal “They,” by the way. As in “The Other”; the “Not Like Us.” “They” as in “They the Medieval Muslim Jihadist” as seen by the Conservative Christian, “They the Right-Wing Gun Nut” as seen by the Bleeding-Heart Liberal Pacifist. Just about EVERYONE has a “They.”

But when it all comes down to it. It's just us. We all breath, we all eat, we all shit, and we all live the best way we think we should. But we're ALL being lied to, and you can't really completely blame the people doing the lying either, because we've come to a point that if they DON'T lie, we DON'T listen.

So, I'm telling you upfront; I'll be lying to you in every post I make. I'll be telling you complete fabrications that contain just as much Truth, information, and verifiable FACT as you will find in any other mainstream news source. The opinions expressed here may or may not actually be my own. Hell, who am I to have a REAL opinion anyway? It would be like asking Snoopy the beagle for his views on Global warming. But that's what I'm here for. I invented myself for just this purpose, and I hope that you will find these lies from the digital mouth of an imaginary man to be entertaining, if not enlightening.

In one of my dad's final appearances, in Vonnegut's “Timequake,” Kilgore's motto was “You were sick, but now you are well again. And there's work to be done.”

I hope you'll join me, because he was right. We're sick, and there's work to be done.

Dr. Duke left the motor in the Great Red Shark running, and the keys are still in the ignition.

Buckle up.

Let's roll.