How can I, an uneducated servant, give meself over to this online world of blah-blah-blogging, lollygogging, tongue-wagging nonsense?

I am but a simpleton, they tell me, hidden behind old shells of hatched cicadas.

I am probably a harmless fungi — “fun guy” — an improbably possible retelling of the myth of Neal Cassady.

A nymph or larva, a crazy buffoon.

Me pals call me the Alliterative Illiterate.

I tell ’em I ain’t no feckin’ joke.

I got me dreams.

I got me visions.

There ain’t no reality.

Them books is what did us all in.

Made us talk like this, full of shite statements about stuff we know nothin’ ’bout:

“The highest ideal of our schools is to produce good citizens.  Good citizenship calls for an understanding of the great problems which a democracy such as ours must face.  The good citizen does not expect to be an expert at solving every problem; but he at least may know that certain important problems exist and he may establish sound principles on which to base his thinking with reference to them.

“The last opportunity that millions of our citizens will ever have to consider some of these problems in a formal way is in the secondary school.  Here education for the many ceases.  And even for the smaller number who go to college it is well that at the age when they begin to form positive opinions a definite opportunity should be afforded to consider the great questions of society, industry, and government.  And so we have in many schools, and shall have in many more, a course known as Problems of Democracy.

“Such a course should consider not only the problems of government, though these may well be looked upon as connecting links by which to bind together all the interests of the American citizen, but also the great questions of social and industrial relationships which are in every way as vital as any questions of government.  Indeed, government exists because we have social and economic problems which cannot be solved without its aid.”

— R.O. Hughes, Peabody High School, May, 1922, Problems of American Democracy, Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania, USA]

I ain’t no scholar.  I never was published by no major book club or put in the Reader’s Digest for thoughtful arogrammatic bathroom readin’.

I’m au jus’ me.

But I’m smarter’n I look and wiser, too.

I ain’t no wise guy or good fella, if you know what I mean.

What I’s got is connections.  Lots of ’em.  More’n you got.

It’s time to pull a few strings, measure a few dirt coffins and go ’bout my business like you ain’t here watchin’ me.

Hey, it’s family.

You know that.  Many of you’ve been here wit me before.

I’m the knucklehead what injured himself on the field of sports, cuttin’ short my professional career and fallin’ back on the ol’ neighbourhood to support me habits and get you to pay for yours.

I’m the invisible guy behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer rig or workin’ the forklift at the warehouse behind your favourite big box store.

You don’ see me, I don’ see you, even if we’d done business together sometime.

I got this crazy notion you gotta hear me story ’cause it’s gonna change our futures like there’s no tomorrow.

I had just walked through the nasty, clean air of the No Smoking Zone, joinin’ the friendly chaps on the back dock for a couple of drags on fags when up walked this dame in cut-off jeans and a camo tanktop, draggin’ the remains of a giant squid behind her…

Yeah, it started just like that…

But you gotta wait until tomorrow to hear the rest of the adventure because, strangely enough, it ain’t happened yet!

See what I mean about crazy?!