Author Archives: brokawphotoi

He’s an icon, representing legions of loyal Americans who have no need to think or doubt the flawless greatness of their country, but not the assholes on the other side of the aisle.

Somehow the phrase “America the Beautiful” became very popular years ago and everyone is familiar with it. I think there is a song or a poem or a commercial that uses it. Sounds nice. If you drive far enough away from urban and suburban areas you can see some lovely areas, for sure

The statue of the Headless Patriot used to have America the Beautiful engraved on its based, but it was changed a few years ago. Now it reads “America the Great.”

Isn’t that great? You betcha. We don’t even have to think about it. Just believe it.

I don’t read newspapers, magazines, books, essays, the back of cereal boxes, stuff like that. Too much work. I can get all the information I need from cable news, Facebook, Twitter and my inbox. I don’t have to think, just absorbed the correct wisdom and ignore everyone who is wrong.

I like to feel I am living up to the ideals of the Headless Patriot. I have a miniature version on the dashboard of my truck. I wanted a bobble head version but was told that wasn’t practical.…

Neighbors are supposed to be neighborly. That’s where the word comes from. “…of, relating to, or characteristic of congenial neighbors. Friendly.”

Not quite. This is America.

Roger and Fred have been neighbors for years and so far have tried to kill or seriously injure the other since at least 2016. I forget exactly what happened in 2016 but it was pretty awful.

These guys used to share everything; food, tools, cars, underwear, hemorrhoid cream. They were were ‘bro’s.’

Ain’t no more, especially when they get on their machines.

During the last snow they happened to meet up on the road while plowing and immediately started aiming for the other. It was a slow motion battle royale, sure to leave only one man standing.

Roger had the speed with his quad, but Fred had the weight with his garden tractor. He’d modified mower last summer, intending to chop Roger to pieces. If he knew he’d be seeing Roger, he’d have left it on for the winter.

It was brutal. They screamed, They clashed. They put rocks inside of snowballs and threw them at each other. Sparks flew, blood flowed.

And just when they were about to ram full speed, head on in a final, furious, fiery , explosive, climactic, crash, the DOT snow plow came roaring down the road and destroyed them both.

I’m pretty sure I saw their wives riding in the cab of the snow plow. I wonder what they were doing there.

…

Originally Sal and Gloria were going to call their place Zen and the Art of Peacekeepers but that whole “Zen and the Art of” thing has been beaten to death (See “Zen and the Art of Beating Book Titles to Death”).Instead they decided to create two businesses to maximize their street cred.

Gloria never hesitates to put bullet holes in things or people she feels threatened by. It’s a stand your ground thing. Badly parked cars, small yappy dogs, people using leaf blowers and anyone says ‘let’s circle back outside the box’ is as good as gone. (The “Hillbilly” handle is a gimmick.)

Sal, her meat puppet, used to spend all his time playing tunes on his empty oil drums and had quite a following. People would gather in the shop, play with the zip guns and listen to him play for hours.

His actual business is fermented juniper berry juice. He makes and sells gallons of it when he plays. It puts people in a here & now, chop water, carry wood frame of mind and they often dance all night even though he kicks them out at 10:00. Frequently they’ll be found in the morning, sleeping naked in the shallows of the Lehigh River which flows behind the shop.

Unfortunately, Gloria and Sal were harassed by code enforcement officials who said they couldn’t play music in a gun shop where children might be present. The music is a bad influence. They had to either ditch the drums or not allow children in the store to buy guns.

Not wanting to lose half her business or hurt Sal, Gloria simply put up a curtain dividing the shop into two separate areas. To make it even more official, she added another phone line. That’s all it took to satisfy the code enforcement officers, along with a gallon of juniper juice.…

Most meat processing was done in China for the longest time We’d grow and kill the pigs, sheep, chickens, goats, donkeys, squirrels, etc. and then ship them frozen to waiting saws and knives in the far east.

But when the supply chain started getting strained, entrepreneurs quickly saw an opportunity to bring this processing business back home.

To make it cost efficient the processing process was automated as much as possible. It is amazing how much meat can be processed in a short time by razor wielding robots. This extraordinary production required some infrastructure upgrading.

In Kearny, one of the centers of the new meat processing industry, special canals were built to transport the processed meat to waiting small dump trucks that take it to delicatessens all around the metro area. A dumptruck can hold about 5 tons of loose meat which the delis store in their former coal bins.

Squirrel is especially popular among Romono-Americans. Donkey is usually sold as roast beef (tastes the same).

American ingenuity is always wonderful to behold.…

I found his card tacked up on the community bulletin board at the pizzeria.

Tim, the Shaman of Noxfeldor, offers surprising good rates for dark arts lessons. Of course, he doesn’t call what he does “dark arks.” That’s so medieval. He prefers to call it thinking outside the new normal paradigm.

I started taking lessons a few months ago. We meet once a week in his thatched roof villa on the moors. It’s cozy. Moldy, but cozy. He burns dry deer turds for warmth which gives the place a nice earthy air. I wish he had a chimney.

Things are going pretty well. My first project was to make a necklace out of frog bones for myself. I wear it all the time and get a lot of compliments. Now we are working on some simple spells. I can now make a ballpoint pen clog up and jam a copy machine. It’s not very impressive but Tim says it’s best to start simple.

When the ground thaws, he promised to take me out grub hunting. If you cook them just right they’ll make you invisible. You have to be carefull, though. Some grubs will turn you bright blue. Tim says that’s what happened to the Blue Man Group, but they made the best of it.

Eventually I hope to have my own villa, but I need to be at least 333 miles away from other shamans. Fortunately, they are all on Google Map so you can see where areas are available. There are a few places in Iowa that look promising.

Maybe I can get people to come over and caucus, when I get all set up. I can serve grubs.…

I thought it was just an overgrown garden.

It used to be a garden before the rift, when the moon was in retrograde and Sagittarius was aligned with Mars. Now it’s a step back in time

Lots of rifts tore open back then. You might even have one in your garage behind the old Christmas decorations.

I always thought that rifts in time could be very useful, especially if you are an investor. Find out what stocks go up then go back a few months and buy a shit load. You’ll be rich.

Seems like a good idea, except you can’t come back. Once you step into a rift, you will always be 6 months behind.

If you stand by the rift, you can see the future, but only the part of the future that is visible from the rift itself.

I stepped into a rift I found in my basement behind the hot water heater. Now I can see everything that happens in the basement six months from now. Not much changes.

I wish I found a different rift. Maybe one in Time Square or East Pickatoo, Illinois where the action is.

I thought about going to Time Square to find one I could step into. That would have taken me back another six months.

Unfortunately, the rifts hadn’t been torn six months ago so that couldn’t work.

This time space continuum stuff is complicated.



…

Lightwater was first discovered in 1981 bubbling out a spring near Interstate 78 where it runs through Calamity Pass in western Pennsylvania. It was found by a hitchhiker, Fietus O’Micmilley who found it in the woods where he stopped to fill his canteen and wash his air mattress.

Traffic on the highway was slow, except for tractor trailers roaring by at 85 mph. He knew they wouldn’t stop to pick him up so Fietus decided to take a nap on his newly cleaned mattress. It was dark when he woke up and he noticed a light coming out of the spring.

He stuck his head under the water to get a closer look. The water was warm and had a slimy feel. When he lifted his head out, his face felt fresh and tingly. He got out his pocket mirror out to see what was going on.

Everything looked the same except his eyebrows were missing. He found them floating in the spring and stuck them back on.

As he was bending over the spring getting his eyebrows, his cell phone fell in. The battery had been dead for weeks so he didn’t really care. But then it started ringing. He fished it out of the spring and answered.

Robo call. (What else?)

Once he finished yelling at the robot to fuck off, he realized there was something special about this water. It charged up batteries.

When dawn came, he hiked to the nearest exit and bought an abandoned gas station and an old electric fuel oil delivery truck. He made multiple trips to the spring, transporting the water to the underground tanks at the station.

What he discovered was that if someone with an electric car just dipped their changing plug in the water it would fully charge the car’s batteries.…

It is hard to believe, but this stuff is entirely legal in Pennsylvania.

It’s off-the-shelf, over-the-counter available everywhere. You don’t need a permit or a prescription.

You do need to show ID, though. Kids eat this stuff but they are not allowed to buy it. That wouldn’t be right.

This cereal makes a great, breakfast smoothie, for adults. Kids can just eat it raw, from the box, washed down with Coke.

For my morning smoothie I blend 12 oz of coffee, some sugar, cream, honey, molasses, chocolate syrup, butter, soft cheese, a Red Bull and two cups of cereal. I add more coffee if it is too thick.

This gets me up and helps me roar through the morning. I have a second one for lunch and am good to go for the whole day.

I then have a good solid dinner and top off the evening with tall glass of Nyquil and some Netflix. …

Humans are essentially just a collection of tubes. Arm tubes and leg tubes attached to the main body tube with a ball at the top. Just like a balloon animal.

The best way to keep our tubes healthy is through good nutrition with USDA certified tube food.

One of my favorite places at the grocery store is the tube department. Sometimes I browse forever before settling on what tubes I’ll have for dinner. Two or three tubes a day is the minimum recommended daily allowance.

Undocumented research by the tube food industry that has not been published or peer reviewed indicates the nitrates and additives in tube food makes resistant to bacteria, mold, mildew, fungus, viruses, parasites and other pathogens. It’s the perfect food for future pandemics and the apocalypse.

It’s not really necessary to be picky about your choices. All the tubes and the stuff inside come from the same factory in Shenhou, a gritty little, factory town about 30 miles from Jengbin.

It’s all good.…

The coveted Conformity Certification confirms true conformists.

Chinese Standard Method, CHSM-1643, specifies conformity. The CHSM Board of Directors authorizes certifications if an applicant can sufficiently verify compliance.

I applied for certification but did not know how to adequately demonstrate that I was a conformist. The Board advised me to just do what everyone else was doing.

I tirelessly tracked trending topics. They kept changing, so I stopped thinking about it and started to just watch.

I got my certification. It needs to renewed annually.…