Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Identified as a trouble maker by the authorities since childhood, and resolved to live up to the description, Charles Carreon soon discovered that mischief is most effectively fomented through speech. Having mastered the art of flinging verbal pipe-bombs and molotov cocktails at an early age, he refined his skills by writing legal briefs and journalistic exposes, while developing a poetic style that meandered from the lyrical to the political. Journey with him into the dark caves of the human experience, illuminated by the torch of an outraged sense of injustice.

Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Aug 25, 2014 11:18 pm

THE JOY OF NOTHING -- WHAT IT IS, WHY YOU NEED IT, AND HOW TO GET IT
by Charles Carreon
8/25/14

The Joy of Nothing is defined as the Nothing that gives Joy. Such a Nothing cannot be conceived as a mere absence of content that you could preserve by keeping things out, like never carrying cash, so you can honestly tell street people, "I have nothing." Rather, the Nothing which brings Joy is something you could actually give to a street person, with or without legal tender to leaven the gift.

You might wonder what benefit a street person could obtain from a gift of Nothing, since they already have less of everything than the rest of us. Abundant lack is their condition. Wouldn't more Nothing just aggravate their situation?

No, that's not the case. A solid hit of Nothing is exactly what a person needs when they're down on their luck and down on themselves. Most people, from street people to the Masters of the Universe who rule a world of their own conceiving from their Manhattan towers, are utterly bereft of Nothing. The wealthy wouldn't know where to find Nothing if they suddenly realized how much they could get from it. The wealthy are also so obsessed with getting something for nothing, that paying something to get Nothing wouldn't appeal to them, so they wouldn't even try to buy Nothing with their money.

In seeking to comprehend this Nothing that brings Joy, I am going to avoid metaphors. Metaphorical discussions about Nothing usually shade into solipsism or nihilism. Solipsism and nihilism are fanciful notions that arise from terms like "nothing" and "everything" without first defining them clearly. So the nihilist says something like "everything is nothing," and the solipsist replies, "then I am nothing," but with all of the operative terms undefined, it is truly their conversation that is nothing.

The "Joy" in the title isn't just marketing fluff -- it's the crux of my argument. This Nothing cannot be mere absence, and must be a source of Joy for you and me.

This may strike you as blatantly outrageous. Joy, you respond, is a product of experience, and experience is a product of events, and events are something, not Nothing!

Furthermore the notion of "Joy" is associated with something ephemeral, evanescent, an emotional will-o-the-wisp that it can be very dangerous to pursue. As a mature person, you have likely reconciled yourself to a life in which you experience tiny sparks of Joy in a jumbled universe where boredom, anxiety, fear, and even terror play a greater role than Joy. Perhaps it's easier to understand Joy, at least it seems that way among the common crowd, when we talk about the "Joy of cooking," or the "Joy of sex," or these other lusty sources of pleasure in our physical life. But when I try to reach beyond these few, hackneyed sources of "Joy," I find myself running out of steam. When I get serious about what Joy means to me, the best example I can come up with is the reunion with my loved ones after a trip away, or a reunion with close family members whom I rarely see.

Can we define "Joy"? If I were asked to define Joy, I would say that it is a state of mind that is simultaneously fulfilled and open, and lasts only as long as we do not fear its disappearance. That's why Saturday night is so much more Joyful than Sunday morning, when our precious weekend is already beginning to disappear. Or at least, it used to be that way back when people had jobs and enjoyed their weekends and dreaded their Mondays. But you get the point. Joy lasts as long as we aren't thinking about losing it, and fear and Joy do not appear to coexist. When our fears are relieved, Joy often follows, and when fear arrives, our Joy departs.

When we experience Joy, there is always an underlying sense of satisfaction, of having received something we wanted, like contact with a loved one, or possession of a treasured object, or of course, relief from fear or danger. If you can imagine a life free of fear or danger, a life in which you and those you love are safe and secure, you will almost certainly experience Joy arising just from the imagination. But you won't dare to indulge in that sentiment for long. I would suggest to you that, because fear is far more prevalent in our minds than we are inclined to talk about, Joy and abundance may be hidden right behind a wall of unacknowledged fear. And just suppose that wall of fear turned out to be unnecessary, based on false assumptions -- what would that wall turn into? Nothing. Joy could be that close. That might account for how we continue to believe in it, even when there is so little to be found.

The search for Joy is often a prelude to pain. In Joy, there are many potential seeds of feeling that emerge. The first emotion is often desire to sustain the Joy, followed by fear of losing it, which as we previously discussed, is the beginning of losing it. Thus, tragically, Joy is the birthplace of endless sorrow. The effort to capture Joy is a form of desire, and desire often enlists anger as its henchman, to procure by force the "object of desire" that we identify as the source of Joy. So Joy that comes with strings attached, that arrives on the winds of circumstance and retreats when we pursue it, is dangerous. It draws us in feverish pursuit of objects that can be captured only briefly, if at all. This pursuit leads not to Joy but simply to more pursuit.

To pursue desired objects, be they people, places, actual physical objects, or sensual experiences, is to be a slave to Joy. If we are slaves to Joy, we are never able to look it in the face, as an equal force, in relation to ourselves.

How can I speak of Joy, that arises in our own Self, as a force distinct from ourself? So let's look at that Self that chases Joy. When I do, and I'm not saying you should see what I see, but when I look for the Self that seeks Joy, I see an interior space that Joy illumines with invisible light. In this space, every other play of mental forces has its existence. Both external perceptions and inner thoughts and feelings have their being here. This space, this light, these images and shadows, are all entirely insubstantial. I cannot show them to you. I cannot pluck the flower I see in my mind and give it to you. It is made of this Nothing of which I speak. I cannot show you the true color of the turquoise waters of Havasu Falls and the red rock depths of the Canyon, yet I can recollect their color at will. I can see the color of the water, and the shape of the cliffs. I can hear the sounds of the Falls and the voices of the Canyon birds. I see and hear it all in Nothing.

So you see, I haven't dragooned you into the usual nihilist insult session where you get called nothing and sit there and take it. This Nothing of which I speak is your very Self, my Self. Having seen it, we will not henceforth ignore each other's existence. We will, rather, be more aware of the amazing, non-substantial medium in which we have our experiences, Joy and all the others.

So if all your experiences are all of the same Nothing-substance, does that mean Joy isn't special? I suspect the answer is yes, in one way, and no in another. Yes, in the sense that, if you objectify a Joyful experience, and start the pursuit of Joy that ends in the spiral of unrequitable desire, then Joy is the same as any other experience. But if Joy is understood as the attitude of fulfillment and openness, then it is a very special way of appreciating the space of our awareness. It is a place of balance and understanding. In Joy that does not decay, because there is no fear of losing the experience, the reality of our great, inner Nothingness is evident. And when we look at other people, their wonderful inner Nothingness is apparent to us as the source and impulse of everything about them that we can see, hear, touch, smell and feel.

Our experience of life is not static, you may have noticed -- experience flows. It flows from one present to the next, without any gap. In this flow, we can experience ourselves as a thing among things, blown along like a cluster of leaves swept up in the wind. If our attention shifts from our form to our experience-realm, with its Nothing-substance, and self-illuminating appearances, then we experience ourselves as space. The winds of time reorganize the shapes appearing here endlessly. We possess this space completely, and spontaneously experience fulfillment and openness. Joy has been waiting for us here all along.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Fri Mar 06, 2015 3:42 am

Hater’s Rights vs. Human Rights
by Charles Carreon
March 5, 2015

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Public Citizen’s Paul Levy Making the World Safe for Identity Thieves, by Tara Carreon

Hater’s Rights

Public Citizen Litigation Group, the brainchild of Ralph Nader, was hijacked by the free-hate-speech movement some years back when head litigator Paul Levy decided that the Internet just wasn’t vile enough — haters needed more rights! And you know, if you build a road, people will drive on it, and once PCLG opened the way, a whole business grew up around hate and the destruction of online reputations. A recent mea culpa posted by Sam Biddle, one of the leading lights of the free-hate-speech movement, argues and convinces himself that destroying reputations is not a personal thing — it’s just business.

A Hater Spills His Guts

This is actually Biddle’s version of a deep self-reflection piece, and it all started when the phone rang one day, and one of Biddle’s rapeutation victims was on the line, asking him out for a drink. Her name was Justine Sacco, and Biddle had joined in reposting her tweet to his blog on ValleyWag.com, where hundreds of haters joined the pile on, feeding a very large DIRA that blew up after Sacco tweeted an un-pc statement that she was White and therefore unlikely to get AIDS while visiting Africa. Of course, Justine Sacco was in fact an international PR woman, and has some insight into how to handle people, because she has Biddle apologizing to her, making excuses for the apology, and singing her praises in fifty shades of bullshit. Ever the realist, though, Biddle feels sorry for the poor little girl who thinks that someday someone’s actually going to find her LinkedIn profile on Google page one for her name.

We All Make Mistakes

Among other things that Sacco had to deal with when her DIRA was burning actively, and not merely smoldering like a digital Fukushima, was coordinated, malicious action to exploit her own identity by creating fake Twitter accounts in her name and tweeting insane things that would feed the DIRA. PCLG has been a leader in the fight to defend this practice, and attempted to keep the identity of Christopher Recouvreur secret from me after he registered “charles-carreon.com,” built a fake blog, and made fake posts in my name, that were in fact attributed to me. Biddle doesn’t address these types of abuses that afflicted his new friend Sacco, because after all, he doesn’t do those things — all he needed to do was post the text of the tweet and he knew it would take on a life of its own. And as the nasty comments piled up, he did nothing to breathe the cool breath of reason on the commenters — no — because he thought Sacco was an insensitive monster, just like everyone else.

So at the bottom of his big confessional, Biddle admits that he had it all wrong, and Sacco is a nice woman who meant no harm. Yep, she is not a monster, not an arrogant, insensitive [insert misogynistic epithet here]. She was tweeting a joke to her circle of friends and relatives, many living in South Africa, who would very well understand her tweet to be a satirical jab at Whites who think their skin color makes them immune to a deadly retrovirus. At no point does Biddle say, “Gee, that’s the sort of mistake that could lie at the heart of all of these rapeutations. Maybe we should stop dousing people with lighter fluid and igniting them after reading a few hastily-tapped phrases that seem to suggest they might have an inappropriate way of expressing themselves.” Nor has he ever used the ever-mutable nature of the Internet to post an addendum to the damaging re-tweet post that, to this day, continues the chorus of hatred deriding Sacco’s humanity, and sliming her with anti-woman epithets. Of course, he can’t go too far, because you know, those free-hate-speech people eat their own.

Losing Your Name Isn’t Easy to Do

Biddle got a little DIRA of his own, and folks tried to get him fired, and he got turned into the very first writer at Gawker to be given a sabbatical for all of November 2014, after which he returned to a less prominent role at Gawker. This happened all because he said something about #Gamergate that got so misinterpreted that … oh well, now he understands me better, because the most important question in this debate is “Who’s Ox is Gored?” Once your reputational ox has been gored, like Biddle, you’ll be slapped stupid, and start expressing topsy-turvy notions that suggest you’re suffering from some species of mental derangement:

“I was writing about the law (especially free speech and other constitutional law issues) long before Danger & Play. I am a radical proponent of free speech. When I heard that the court system was being used to silence a young man, I decided to speak out.

Rather than ignore me or let me speak my mind, Social Justice Bullies (a loose collection of toxic people such as Gawker writers and their supplicants) went on the attack. They harassed me, cyber stalked me, and otherwise spread their stench towards me.

I looked into #GamerGate more and saw some revolting faces. I saw people like Sam Biddle (who bullies nerds), Max Read (who enjoys talking about date-rape drugs) and other vile people.”

Poor Sam. He took it square in the face and he’s gone batshit crazy. It’s our fate here at Rapeutation to keep the light on for every DIRA victim, even, or perhaps especially, someone who has sinned like Sam Biddle, because he is still human, and has human rights. The destruction of your good name, as Biddle learned, is quite painful, and it brings the nauseous spectacle of the Internet into sharp relief:

“I watched a whirlpool of spleen and choler swelling till it had sucked in most of my energy and attention, along with that of many of my coworkers. Hundreds of people tweeted or emailed me or my editors; blogs and minor internet personalities sprang into action to challenge me. Their demands started with my firing and escalated from there.”

Oh yes, that is the sound of someone realizing, “Holy shit! My ox is gored!” Biddle may be a big tech blogger, but he is human and every DIRA victim knows this feeling of losing control over their name. When it’s over, they’re not really sure they like the sound of their own name anymore. I suppose back when DIRAs were news, the fact that people were having their names destroyed, one here and one there, now and then, didn’t seem so bad. But when you see that it results in unemployment, divorce, loss of friendships, depression, and suicide, then you gotta wonder, where’s the “public benefit” in twisting the law into a license for online hate speech?

The Right to Be Remembered As Who You Really Are

According to the European Union Court of Human Rights, human beings have the right to prevent Google from indexing their name. On the factsheet about implementation of the ruling, the Euro-regulators say that “Individuals have the right to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them where the information is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive for the purposes of the data processing [and] could not be justified merely by the economic interest of the search engine.”

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans, with the French leading the pack, have used Google’s webform to process requests for removal of their names from the index. Google had been taking names only out of its “local” websites, i.e., Google.de, Google.es, etc. In November 2014, the EU told Google to take the results off Google.com, so this human right has legs. Maybe long enough to reach our own, native shores? Oh, that seems so very unlikely with so much money to be made in the flaying of human flesh, and with the press calling it “the right to be forgotten.” As if to be “remembered” were to have your name and image mutilated for the benefit of Gawker and its “wags.” I don’t want to be forgotten. I’d just like the right to be remembered as myself.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:31 am

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ROLY POLYS: AN EXPERT ON THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE AWARDS ACCOLADES
by Charles Carreon
03/06/15

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People called them different things — sowbugs, pillbugs, roly polys, potato bugs. The little black, armored bugs that ball up and pretend to be dead when you touch them. They’re a pretty low form of life, but they’d make perfect Netizens, according to Sam Biddle, the fallen Gawker tech punditwho took a “sabbatical” last year before Christmas after his tweet urging a resurgence of online bullying fell on many thousands of irritated ears connected to fingers that went to work clicking his demise.

Biddle now engages in deeper thinking, and has been suspended from off-the cuff tweeting. In one of his tortured, post-DIRA posts, Biddle gave fellow-DIRA-victim Justine Sacco his highest praise. Justine, who was savaged online for tweeting that she doubted she’d catch AIDS while in Africa, because she was White, garnered an online apology from Biddle after she phoned him and they met for drinks. During their meeting, Justine essentially accepted Biddle’s tender of his guilt-rotted heart, further softened by the drubbing he’d received over his own misconstrued tweet.

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Biddle was then able to reveal the extent of his admiration for Justine. To put it simply, what really turned Biddle on about Justine was that she knew when to shut up. Right away. Curl up in a ball. Tuck your head in your bottom, don’t move and perhaps the threat will take you for dead and go away. It’s not a very inspiring position for a free speech advocate, but this is the law of the jungle. Obey or die.

Biddle, riddled with reputational death himself, mocked fate in a danse macabre. Bowing low before Justine, he swept the dirt, kissing the locket of her shoe. This is supreme wisdom — she remains silent. Together they will endure despite the kiss of death that never fails, and she will rise from the grave of her Internet burial. For in this life, it cannot be the case for Sam Biddle and Justine Sacco that savvy brains such as theirs will look out of desolated eyes, watching their careers expire. No, and denial is a river.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:23 pm

Yik Yak Yuck! These Boys Are Not Alright
by Charles Carreon
3/13/2015

What is it with so-called “intelligent” boys these days? It’s hard to tell what’s gotten into them, but it sure as hell looks like the devil. And it’s not the ones who look tough, like this punked-up guy with red hair and a peace sign on his sleeve I just saw walking south on Highway 1 in Half Moon Bay. Like as not, he doesn’t post rape jokes or sexually offensive comments about his teacher on Yik Yak. Since the young man I just saw walking by in black and metal punk regalia is probably not going to any college or university, he probably doesn’t even care about Yik Yak, a Twitter-clone that posts all tweets anonymously from a limited geographic area and has taken the male populations of the nation’s college campuses by storm.

An Ideal App for Adolescent Bullshitters

The main use for Yik Yak is to build a group-think, conformist mentality amongst those hordes of little twits marinating in self-indulgent leisure for four years, fucking off, pretending that they’re hooking up with hotties in the dorms instead of mating with their palms in the shower, and Yik Yakking their life away while their parents think they’re taking notes in lecture class. We used to call it “getting a liberal education,” but there’s nothing liberal about the attitude of many undergraduates, if a recent article in the New York Times has got its facts right.

Students Free to Virtually-Rape Their Teachers at UGA

It was quite a shock to Margaret Crouch when she discovered what a number of anonymous little shitbags in her class were Yik Yakking about. We didn’t actually get to see their nasty comments and attacks on her character that were happening in real time while she attempted to deliver a lecture of educational significance, but we are so familiar with this kind of disgusting drek because of its wide circulation beyond the confines of Yik Yak, that we can easily infer how terrifying, disgusting, and stomach-turning it must have been for this professor.

Unfortunately, Crouch attends the University of Gutless Administrators (“UGA”), also known as EasternMichiganUniversity, who apparently couldn’t find their lawyer, or took their advice on controlling their students from the Free Hate Speech Mafia. As the New York Times put it, “After all, it would take a lawsuit, a subpoena, and some interest in standing behind professors to hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit or serve a subpoena.” Oh, gee! A subpoena! UGA just can’t do that.

EmoryUniversity had a different take on it, and blocked Yik Yak from their servers. The New York Times suggests this is an exercise in futility since students can access it on their wireless plan. So at least the Yik Yak Yuck Fucks have to pay for the goddamned data, and they have to consider whether it’s worth a few cents to rape their professors during class at Emory. At Phillips of Exeter, Mark Zuckerberg’s alma mater, where the elite of the nation are moved out of their middle school Pampers and into full-size adult Attends, the use of Yik Yak became so horrifying and out of hand that the headmaster banned it.

Policing Speech Is Easily Done When It’s Negative Speech About the Police

It is well known that the FBI, like schools, attempt almost nothing at all when faced by speech attacks on ordinary citizens, such as the numerous death threats that have been issued to Michael Moore by celebrities such as Clint Eastwood, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly. Institutions constantly claim that they are powerless when death threats are presented against participants and their activities, such as the gamergate threats against Brianna Wu, that the PAX show refused to take seriously. Just like UGA, unable to think of a way to protect a teacher from its students’ verbal savagery.

But we well know that when the shoe is on the other foot, and someone spits a spitwad in the direction of the FBI, the police, or some government figure with a little clout, they shortly find that their IP address has been traced, their anonymity has been ripped off, and they are dealing with a bunch of guys in black ballistic suits carrying automatic rifles who take the computer and its owner down to the station for a little chat that leads, ultimately, to a plea bargain in federal court.

It’s just a question of whose ox is gored. Women just need to start goring some oxen up on Capitol Hill. It might not take a car caravan of angry women circling the Beltway honking their horns and demanding protection from virtual rape, but then again, why not try it?

Elliot Rodger and the Vengeful Victim

So much for what’s wrong with the schools and the cops. But the boys have created themselves, and must be the primary focus of criticism. Why do young men heap shit on women and indulge prolonged fantasies of sexually-tinged revenge? Thanks to Elliot Rodger, who killed the sorority blondes he lusted after because they would not open their hearts to him, and killed himself because he couldn’t bear the humiliation of being unsexed any longer, we have plenty of insight into this problem from the viewpoint of boys who perceive themselves as the victims of womankind.

Elliot was obsessed with bedding a woman because he believed what the media told him thousands of times since he first starting watching TV and movies — the only guy who is a man is the one who can get a girl to part her thighs. Despite his earnest efforts and reasonable belief that he was as good-looking, articulate, and well-heeled as his peers, he believed he was starving sexually while his cohorts were feasting on luscious lovelies. I suspect his perceptions were out of sync with reality.

While sex at UCSB might be happening all over the place, Elliot was probably less deprived than he thought, compared with other young men. Sexual frustration is a substantial component of the adolescent male life, and almost all boys suffer from it. Sexual frustration accounts for substitutive behavior such as gay sex, compulsive use of pornography, and, now that Yik Yak has empowered them to do it, the pleasures of conducting a virtual gangbang. I once remember talking to a therapist who had worked in Washington state, not the city. He told me that the kind of folks he had been treating in court-ordered therapy would get together in bars and give each other positive feedback for incest and other sick predatory sexual behavior. Groupthink developed in real time using Yik Yak encourages young men to think that they have a legitimate complaint against women, and therefore the right to revenge themselves upon them.

Yik Yak Abuse: A Leading Indicator for Future Sex Predators

Indeed, if you could identify the type of Yik Yakkers who are engaging in the most violent verbal behavior, you might find some people who will later in life turn into someone like Elliot Rodger. If they can commit verbal crimes with impunity, the desire to commit physical crimes with impunity will certainly arise as well.

Speech, of course, is the precusor for action, as the military has long known. Training for warfare develops the ability to see the enemy as merely a target for violence and death. Violent speech leads to violent action, because “as a man thinketh…”

But the boys will tell you they’re just having a good time, and if their mothers or fathers saw what they are Yik Yakking about, they would explain that it’s just the sort of thing that boys do these days, and even though it looks outrageous, it doesn’t mean they are headed in the same direction as Elliot Rodger. But they don’t know that for sure. They don’t know what they’re turning into, because these boys are not alright.

The media insists on saying that communication is just communication, and the load of frivolous, meaningless, merely entertaining communication swells every day. Every day people are asked to believe that more and more free-hate-speech is the wave of the future, and that they are just old fuddy duddies who are not getting it. Yes, Hollywood can tell you that it doesn’t matter how many murders a kid sees, it will never turn him toward violence, and that no matter how many times people see problems solved by putting a bullet in someone’s brain, that it will never cause some kid to put a bullet in somebody’s brain. But a lot of bullets are turning up in brains in this country, and the media is not accepting responsibility for any of it. This is kind of strange, given that the media is well aware of the power of pornography, and during the second world war, the first world war particularly, actively engaged in disseminating racist caricatures and incitements to brutal violence against Asian peoples that ultimately culminated in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two astoundingly cruel, brutalizations of nearly half a million Japanese people, accomplished by the decision of a single pathetic mediocrity, Harry S. Truman, who apparently wanted to kill more people than Hitler had even attempted to kill in one day.

Words count. The boys are not alright, because the words they eat like Fruitloops and Cheerios are toxic. Their souls, what they have left of them, are severely corrupted. If any of them are reading this, I trust that they will see their image in the mirror I am holding up, and be disgusted, as the rest of the decent world is. They have no legitimate membership in our society, and should all be considered Elliots in the making until they are safely in their graves.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Mon Jun 15, 2015 11:40 pm

The Village
by Charles Carreon
4/27/15

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Ron was not happy. Not happy at all. He was staring at the hole in his dashboard, and he just could not believe it. The windows weren't broken, the doors were still locked the way he'd left them before he started his shift. It was broad daylight. Out loud he breathed the words, "Where's my fucking stereo?" A frown was holding his face prisoner, and it tightened its grip as he reached out and said, "What the hell is this?"

"This" was a wispy piece of iridescent paper, or maybe it was metal, about half the width of a stick of gum, and twice as long. Again he said, "What the hell?" as he flipped on the dome light to give it a closer look.

As he did, it stiffened in his fingers and a gleam ran down its length. Then a string of words began flowing across the surface. The words were ... well he couldn't remember them exactly when he tried to later, but it was essentially something like,

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"Dear Ron,

Your car stereo has not been stolen. You have been selected for a special experiment. Your car stereo has been displaced to a null space, and as a result, a village of 600 people has been spared from destruction. Should you want your stereo back, it will be necessary to displace the village. To make your choice, you need do nothing. The same process that initiated this special experiment will effect its return."


Ron felt a surge of anger, possessiveness. He had really been enjoying his car stereo, and so had his girlfriend. He could put the old one back in. Geez. He stared at the strip of metal that had stopped displaying text and was getting wispy again.

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He stared out the windshield, seeing a village in his mind, drowned at the bottom of a lake someplace in China. He didn't know why he thought that. The note hadn't said anything about China. He went to look at it again. There was nothing between his fingertips. Oh my god. He felt dizzy for a second, like maybe he was losing it, and stuck his hand into the empty space, feeling loose wires. "It's still gone," he said. And he knew why.

Luann didn't even mention when she played the old stereo that he reinstalled. It was weird, almost as if she didn't remember him getting it, or the big deal he'd made about the increase in tonal range the new amp had, with digital fuzzy logic and ... and he realized he didn't miss it at all. Things were going better with Luann, in fact, and maybe it was because he spent less time talking about electronics stuff. He chuckled to himself. Fuckin' crazy shit. "Special experiment. Scammers ... pranksters...." occasionally he wasn't sure, but he couldn't bring himself to test it, to say, "I want my stereo back! Drown the village." No, no. He didn't want to risk it. He did not want his stereo back that bad, or maybe, he realized, at all.

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Ron was looking at Luann's books -- pictures of coral reefs and fishing villages. Luann was making lunch in the kitchen. They'd gotten married about a year before, and on the weekends she liked to cook, and Ron liked to dream about places they could get away to. He called out to Luann, "We should go see some of these places."

"We can't," she replied.

"Why not?"

"Because they're all gone. Drowned by rising seas. Even before that, the coral reefs were killed by rising acid levels."

Ron looked at the cover of the book. It was called "Hidden Paradises," by a couple of photographers. A husband and wife team. Their picture was on the back standing on a dock in some jungle with a pontoon airplane floating next to them. Ron envied them in every fiber of his being. They looked relaxed, satisfied, energized. Just like I'd like to feel, said Ron to himself. He checked the date on the book -- 2018. "I hadn't realized this book was so old," he said to Luann, as he got up off the couch and walked into the kitchen, looking at the couple on the back again. "Why didn't our parents give a shit?"

"It's hard," said Luann. "They were pursuing a dream, right? Isn't that what they taught us in school? The American Dream was unsustainable and toxic? Now sustainability is our path."

"Too bad we couldn't have taken it by choice," answered Ron. He went back to the couch. Their only window was next to it.

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That night he had a dream. He was playing poker, and he got a royal flush. Everyone around the table was looking at him with amazement as he fanned the cards out on the felt. He was about to reach out and scoop the pot, that was stacked with cash, gold, jewels, a king's ransom, it looked like. Then he looked across the table, and there was a little girl in a threadbare muslin dress, looking wan and pale and hungry, and as she looked at him, he saw that she was one of a great crowd behind her, all hungry, all silent, all pleading without breathing a sound. Then suddenly a clock started ringing, and he looked up on the wall and there was a clock there, and both hands were pointed straight up. He awoke with a dry mouth.

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After that, the special experiment resumed, and picked up speed. One day it was his new car, reduced to a scooter, with a little silver wisp hanging off the right-side mirror. It was a nice scooter, and his car was worth a lot -- it displaced a huge slum outside of Rio de Janeiro, and replaced a six square mile swath of Amazonian forest, and several villages of forest dwellers with unique language, culture, and pharmacological wisdom.

He got into the game, wondering what the experiment would hawk next, and how much he'd get for it. From the news, he could see the world becoming a much nicer place to live, but he didn't need the news to see it. The results were all over the neighborhood. For one thing, there was a neighborhood. In the evening, you could hear people calling their kids home for supper, screen doors slamming, and smell dinner aromas drifting across the way. Bicycles were everywhere, and cars rarely seen. Less car accidents, for sure. Strangely, he hadn't heard of a war, anywhere, in years. That was so weird. He tried to remember some of the wars. Like there was one in the desert for so long. Religious thing, or maybe an oil thing. He just couldn't remember.

The years went by, and he never told anyone what was happening. He knew he couldn't be the only participant in the special experiment, and he could tell it was going well, very well indeed. But no one talked about it. No one said, "I'm saving the world one displaced commodity at a time."

But that's how it was. Gradually, even the neighborhood thinned out, and he and Luann decided to move closer to the beach. There were a number of places available, and rent was low. They didn't worry about buying the place. Nobody seemed to worry about buying a place anymore.

About a month after they moved in, all of Ron's automotive tools disappeared, along with the scooter he'd had for years ever since his car disappeared. Now the scooter was gone. He walked into the garage, and whoa, it was a stable. Hmm, he recognized the horse, and it recognized him. He had an apple for it right in his pocket. He fed it to him, and rubbed his head under the forelock. "Whatta ya say, boy? Shall we saddle up for a ride later?" Rusty, that was the horse's name, pawed the ground lightly and whinnied with a soft head shake in reply.

Image Image

After dinner, the sun went down red over the sea, and he and Luann sat in woven chairs seeing the world tinged with passionate rose light.

As the sun winked behind the coral atoll offshore, a pod of dolphins broke through the glassy surface of the sea, spreading ripples across the waves. Ron held Luann's hand gently. He looked forward to losing so much more.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:41 am

Hooray for the Financial Apocalypse, by Charles Carreon

11/01/08

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:41 am

People That Crime Is Too Good For, by Charles Carreon

11/08/08

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:41 am

Part 1 of the Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, by Charles Carreon

11/12/08

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:45 am

Part 2 of the Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, by Charles Carreon

11/12/08

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:54 am

Geraldo in Tucson, by Charles Carreon

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