Canto 109 – Whoa, Gnarly, Dude!
The crew of the Megadeth were busy playing beer pong in the main lounge of the starship when suddenly Dr. Hooey, Time Knight and man of mystery, mysteriously showed up at the door to the lounge.
“Oh, hey, Big-nosed Dude! Nice to see ya an’ all, but you ain’t supposed to be here. Not without the Megadeth tellin’ us that ya entered the ship!” said Nikki Sixx with a rather non-sober glint in his eyes.
“I am not going to argue with anyone here. I know this timeline like the back of my hand. You are going to agree to take me to the Battle of Coventry. It is necessary that you do this. And the book in the archives says that you have done it every time you were asked in every reality. I realize that I am not Shan Sasaki and this is the first reality that you have been asked by me for this favor. Still…”
“Wha…?” said Cold Death, shaking his green mohawk both stupidly and drunkenly in the same shake.
“What my esteemed colleague is trying to say is that we not only don’t know who you are, but we do not have any sort of authorization from any of our superior officers for the sort of transportation mission you are presently seeking.”
“Ah, yes. You are the one who speaks more coherently when you are drunk. You are the one named Vince Niell. You are the one I need to be talking to.”
“Whoa, gnarly dude!” said Nikki Sixx. “You can acktually unnerstan’ him when he’s drunk?”
“Actually, Mr. Time Knight, sir, I spell my name Vince Neill when I am drunk.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“The only reason I spell it wrong to begin with is because some kid playing a role-playing game with the writer of this story named me with the wrong spelling long ago.”
“Yes, and the writer left it spelled wrong as a joke. I know all of that. But that’s why you have to do this. The writer needs a Deux ex Machina solution to an upcoming problem that he can’t figure out another way to solve.”
“Wha…?” commented Cold Death stupidly as his ping pong ball missed all the cups and he was forced to drink five cups of Antarian Ale all at once.
“You know, you are playing beer pong all wrong,” Hooey said.
“Yeah… but we like it bedder dis way,” said Nikki. “But what the Cold Man wansta say is, whatta hell is Dooz-x-Mockeena?”
“It means God in the Box, my inebriated minion. The author can’t think of any way to solve a problem but to pull an answer out of his anal sphincter.”
“Whoa, gnarly, Dude!”
“Yes, you said that already,” reminded Hooey, concerned about too much repetition of dialogue in an already tepid tale. “So, you’ll do this for me, Vince?”
“Yes. On the basis of that rationale. But Captain Tommy Lee and Ensign Pamela are both on the planet giving a concert tonight.”
“That’s fine. I have it on the authority of the Library of All Time that tonight is the real start of their fame and singing career. We don’t need them.”
“Okay then. I am inappropriately, and without following proper protocol, going to agree to your commands. But only because I am totally, stupidly drunk at the moment due to our horrible misinterpretation of the standard rules of beer pong.”
“That works for me.”
Catch a Falling Star 
From an Alternative Point of View
Am I literally able to fortell the future? Of course not. But as an overly-sensitive artistical type one could argue that there is evidence in my art and writings that my reality now was at least partially embedded in my consciousness many years ago.
And truthfully, looking at the truth of things based on empirical evidence is what this point-of-view post is all about. We cannot always rely on the traditional concepts of good and evil as they have been taught to us. Sometimes you have to look at how the evidence stacks up properly, and just plain intuit a new way of seeing the whole picture. Yes, this is a portrait of a fifteen-year-old former student of mine. And she was definitely evil and difficult to deal with. But she went into nursing after high school. She works in the ER where her decisive ways and ferocious insistence on having things work out in her favor because that’s the way the established rules say it must be done turn into positive qualities that are probably saving lives in a Texas hospital as we speak. It is all in how you perceive the truth of a situation and then apply it.
Comedy, of course, depends greatly on rearranging your point of view. If you are going to make a joke about something, you have to re-mix and un-match the details in ways that still make a sort of sense to the reader or the hearer of the joke. I have taught at schools like Dudwhittler’s. If you are a teacher, you recognize that that school bus carries not only that which is funny, but also that which is very true. The teacher driving the bus is a tin man who easily rusts and cries too much, thus rusting further, but you can see he has earned his heart, even if he has to drive the bus on top of teaching so he will have enough money to buy food.
But probably the most anticipated thing from a new perspective that you were expecting since reading the title is a new perspective on the Coronavirus shut-down and economic depression. That alternative take is simply this… the pandemic, though extremely hard and painful, is a good thing that happened at the right time.
I am willing to say this, even though the way the virus has been mishandled in this country is going to very likely be the death of me, because there are benefits that we simply don’t recognize without a thorough punch to the gut and another to loose teeth.
It is a good thing because it will make it harder for Herr Fuhrer Pumpkinhead to win the next election, and he will probably take a number of corrupt Republicans down to the bottom of the sea with him.
It is a good thing because it is proving to us that we can survive on less and still make our way out of the bad situation.
It is a good thing because kids get extra time off from school, and probably also the chance to spend more time with the people who really teach them things we need them to know… like parents, grandparents on Zoom, teachers who don’t fear distance-learning technology, and trolls on the internet (Yes, I know that last one is risky and mainly learning the hard way, but it is also true from before the virus hit).
It is a good thing because the air is cleaner. And we have proven that we can make radical adjustments when it is a matter of life and death. And the environmental crisis is actually a matter of life and death.
So, now I’ve had my twisted say about my pretzel-minded perspective. And so you can now trash it, or possibly learn to like pretzels.
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