Muh Manmeemown Mormasms

I am not a rich man. But I am a comfortable one. I own a house, and I can (barely) make the payments. I live right on the cusp of the worst neighborhood in town, one that's got all the poverty and hookers and puke but none of the boho pan-racial energy of a really good poor neighborhood. But I live just far enough away from it (I'd say the circle falls within about a block or two of here) that it doesn't spill into my backyard that often.

There is nothing worse than a comfortable, worse complacent, young man complaining about the weirdness of the outside world. But I couldn't help it, man. Standing in line at Subway as the couple ahead of me shook and punched the microwave for about five minutes trying to get it to work (really, it looked like I'd come into a matinee of 2001 about five minutes late) as the way-too-loud piped-in satellite signal forcefucked that Linkin Park song about breakin' the habit tonight down all our throats, I thought so loudly that I would've bet someone heard me: WHY AM I HERE?

Something closed my eyes. The dull bread smell collected in a dull waft and forced the glass door so postered up it may as well be wood. Out. The land was glass and ice and the streets cobbled with cat's eye marbles. Wanton harlots dangled speculatively from terraces stretching all the way up to chrome grey skies. In. I froze aloud in a blitz of cherry cream castle floor wax, sliding down the spiralling balustrades and up again, a wink and an ollie for every gargoyle along the way. I sat and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. The tractor-guided paper spilled like shaving cream billowing from a can out the window, catching on the treads of every rolling tank who'd come to find and kill me.

Fucking Linkin Park. They should be working at a Subway, not marauding one.