Gorilla Testes May Cause Impaired Judgment

I had something wrong with me -- a dreadful disease or condition -- so Doctor S recommended a few boxes of his own Gorilla Testes Vitality pills. He said it'd restore what I was lacking and help get my normal symptoms back in whack. The pills aren't bad. You merely swallow them, but since you need a half box every day there is some lingering gorilla testicular aftertaste. Doc says that's how you know they're working. But still, it'd be bad to go the zoo and have a lady gorilla catch a whiff of my breath...

Oh, it's terrible getting old and needing outside stimulants! But that's the ingenuity of man, able to diligently study every issue, then extract a cure from the things of nature, in this case the delicate privates of our first cousin in his non-evolved state. Which is better than having to call our actual first cousins and ask for help.

I was reading over the possible side effects, and it was all pretty straightforward. "May cause impaired judgment," which I was prepared to risk. Because when your vitality's zapped, you want help. And you think you'll stay home and get your rest. Take the pills and sleep. But it must have given me new vitality right away, because they're all saying I made a pretty big night of it.

All I know is, I went out for dinner and had a very nice time. I made a lot of new friends when I stood up and announced I was covering the tab for everyone. Then I was also very popular with the waitresses when I tipped each one 50 bucks. I think I can handle the extra charges but it'll be tight. If I make the minimum payment on the credit card every month for the next three years, I'll easily have dinner covered...

On the way home, they're also saying my foot was heavy on the gas. It seems that every cop in town was personally chasing me. What an adventure! I've always been proud of my ability to elude capture, enemies, anyone on my trail. Here in the Big City, though, it's extra easy, with a lot more roads as well as the interstate to dodge capture. But eventually they had me cornered. So I abandoned the car and made my way into a thicket of trees. Anytime I'm in any sort of altered state of consciousness, it feels like I make very fast progress when I run. So I easily stayed ahead of the fuzz till they finally caught me.

Which wasn't till I got all the way back to my place, in my yard. There a cop was waiting and jumped me. I tried to elude him in the backyard and climb a tree, but it was soon over. There was just a tiny bit of excitement left when I managed to yank the gun out of his holster and shoot the brick wall in back. So many chunks of cement were flying, I probably should've had goggles on. It wasn't long till he had me in irons.

There's a guy in my cell called Shivs. And he let me borrow his phone to write this blog. Witnesses said I dropped my own phone in the aquarium at the bar. I don't remember any of that.

The Criminal On The Lam

It's always been one of my hobbies to think about how I'd escape, in the event I were ever taken alive and incarcerated. And then what I'd do on the lam, so my efforts wouldn't have been in vain.

So far I haven't had to put any of my plans to the test, somehow having maintained a perfect record of freedom. But it can only pay to be prepared, even for long-shot events, like the Soviet Union reconstituting, invading the United States, setting criminals free and jailing law-abiding civilians, etc.

It's always surprising how many people go to jail. I read the crime column in the paper, and, Hey, Stupids, Do you not realize by now Wal-Mart is watching for shoplifters? Or, Hey, Idiots getting drunk at home, Do you not realize the police prosecute people for domestic disputes? It actually pays to live a fairly decent life, although, yes, it does take away your opportunities to escape.

I've seen a few easy escapes on TV. Like in The Day The Earth Stood Still, somehow the entire military -- and federal authorities -- can't keep Klaatu in jail. In fact, they're totally incompetent, since Gort simply burns a hole in the wall and carries him away and no one at the jail even notices. Or in The Lone Ranger, I think it is, they pull the jail wall down with a donkey and rope and escape and no one in the area sees or hears it.

I wouldn't expect an escape today to be easy. With modern technology -- video monitoring and platinum deadbolts -- they're making it a lot harder. You about have to escape before you get in, or make long term plans to seduce a jail employee and get them to help you escape in the dirty laundry. But damn the luck if they happen to do laundry onsite! It's almost enough to make you forgo crime all together...

OK, getting to the recent article in The Squeaky Wheel, two escaped but only one really made it. Of course the jail in Grease, Iowa, is one of your older facilities. They have enough heat ducts, large vents, and broken registers, they may as well put a revolving door at the outlets. It was built in the 1890s, back when criminals more or less abided by the honor system.

So let's say I get out of their jail, and I'm the one who isn't recaptured. How do I manage my affairs on the lam, to keep it that way? Naturally, I avoid all bars, tattoo parlors, whorehouses, and other seedy places. I don't phone home. I don't use an ATM. (The fees are terrible anyway.) It's going to be a matter of keeping my head down and my nose clean. If I live on the south part of town, I'm on the north side. If my moll (my main squeeze) is on the west side, I'm on the east. And so forth.

The best place to live on the lam, in my opinion, would be near the railroad tracks. You can always hop a freight, especially if it's the middle of the night. And again, you always use misdirection. If your family lives east of town, you go west. Or, perhaps this is trickier, if you family lives east, you could go east, since they'd assume you were going west. And maybe I'd have to rethink the areas of town I'd go to, above, and do just the opposite of what they'd assume.

Of course it'd be good to get different clothes. You can't be running around in orange. Even the cops in Grease aren't dumb enough to see that as counter-intuitive; that's a dead giveaway. I'd wish it were summer and people's laundry was on the line. Then I could dress up in bib overalls, hang out at the coffee shop, and talk sports, and no one would ever suspect! Although maybe jail would be funner.

The basic rule for living on the lam is always to do it right and make the right choices. If there's even the slightest chance of making a mistake, instead back up and don't do it. An ounce of prevention... You haven't got the luxury of screwing up... One strike and you're out. Think! Always think of your next move, run through all the options and possible consequences, then go with the best choice. If you can easily envision being captured for doing A-B-C, by all means do X-Y-Z instead.

That's how I'd maintain my freedom, by never making a mistake. Great advice.

An Upset Stomach

SUMMARY: A guy deals with the knowledge that one's stomach is as big as one's fist. He refers to his stomach by showing his fist, getting him in trouble.

If we wrote this as people took it, we might say, "He threw himself into the melee with reckless abandon, stomachs a'flying, and was able to clear the floor. Only later did he calm down and become increasingly aware of a terrible pain. Looking down at his bloodied flesh, it took a physician to bandage up his battered stomach."

Because his fist and his stomach were one, in a sense. They had told him years ago, in school, that his stomach was the same size as his fist. He remembered the lesson so well; he had a photographic memory when it came to comparisons of unseen organs with the seen. So his stomach, like his heart, were the same size as his fist! It was a good way to learn.

Except he liked to show people the size of his stomach, holding up a fist, along the way leading to misunderstandings. Maybe had he taken a professorial tone, instructing them that a comparison was in process, it might've been different. But just to hold up a fist and assume the other party would know what he's talking about, it didn't always work that way.

The first time was in school, right after he learned the size of his stomach. He went to the school lunch counter. The lady asked if he was hungry, and he held up a fist. She took it as a menacing gesture, there being zero tolerance for such things in school, and he was immediately expelled. His mother and father at home were taken aback, asking what happened. He held up his fist, apparently not thinking to explain the situation with words, and they threw him out of the house.

He had no better luck with the pacifists, a group of peace-loving people he fell in with. They were headed to The Great Lawn, a grassy public spot in his town, to protest. One of the pacifists said they needed to stop for something to eat, saying, "I feel a bit peckish." Our fellow, hoping to show complete solidarity in the desire for a meal, held up his fist. The pacifist got the message and had to chastise him: "Dude! No! We're pacifists! No fists! You're out!"

He wandered on his way, forever in an increasingly bitter contemplation on the comparative sizes of his heart, fist, and stomach, with his stomach winning out through hunger. Penniless, he showed a kindly fruit dealer his tightened fist, who called for the police, leading our guy to jail.

In the jail, he's so hungry he orders a double portion, a meal twice the size. The jailer teases him, "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach!" A brand new comparison confused him. "No!," he shouts, then holds up an insistent fist.

"Hey!," the guard goes, "now you get nothing! ... I have power to give you a meal to fill your stomach! And I have power to deny your stomach a meal!"