dramatis inpersona

Fortress of Attitude
The too-big old house were UCC, TCG and DOB live; across the street from the meth lab; around the corner from the poorly fenced yard with the three pit bulls. The Fortress is the usual location where the cast of characters wage their own personal war on the terrors of growing old. The Fortress is where we all go to escape the Actual World.

Crazy Stew
It's what's for dinner. The ambient atmosphere here in the Fortress smells like a savory crazy stew of paranoia, passive agression and delusional behavior. (It actually smells like urine, peppermint, and cheap dog food that's been left in the bowl too long and become black and crusty.) The recipe? Knead several pounds of satire and frustration together in the pizza dough cycle of your bread machine; add a generous pinch of profanity and some beer; Shake the mixture together in a bottle corked with rage, and break it over the head of someone you love. Just do it in the Fortress, and not the Actual World. (We can't go back there any more. Jesus Christ).

The Actual World
The stage most of us inhabit when not in the Fortress. These days in the AW, it feels like mysterious forces stronger than Capitalism are creating disquiet, making us pause, in civilization's march upward to wisdom; and in the S&Ps march upward toward unspeakable wealth. Currently, when I venture into the AW, I am transported to a postmodern shabby truck stop where people say things like: "Alas, how is't with you/ That you do bend your eye on vacancy/ And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?"