HAVE HEART

"The heart was once thought of as a very soft nut," said Dr. Hermples.
"Oh wow," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "For centuries, tribes the world over would remove the heart and wait months, sometimes years, for the organ to turn a perfectly kind of hard nutty consistency."
"Well, I certainly didn't know that," said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor. "Now that we've done away with big stuff like the cancers, the AIDS, and the other stuff --"
"-- and mental retardation is at an all time low," said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor.
"-- and syndromes have just kinda gone away on their own," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "Since all that happened, the eyes of the world's greatest doctors turn to other stuff. Stuff that was important to people before the bad stuff came along."
"Before everything became a disease," said Karen.
"Before everything became an emotional affliction," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "We did not truly understand the heart, the diseases, the afflictions – until the visitor came. And now we are free again to look back & look forward, pioneering through the worlds of popcorns, horsies, wooden dentures, the physics of rubber balls, nuts. This is the kind of work yours truly and other experts in the field can focus on today."
"Experts in the nut field?" said Karen.
"I have to LOL at 'nut field'," said Donovan.
"We were lucky when the visitor came, weren't we?" said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor. "As predicted many hundreds of years ago, the citizens of the world did not know how to react to a visit from an alien lifeform when it appeared on Earth. But we weren't only ‘lucky’ that the visitor came – we were really very lucky."
"I wish I could speak to plants," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "But without the visitor, we did not know that the plants had brains and feelings, could talk – could move like humans move. Because the plants were afraid of us. The plants were shocked into immobility."
"It’s amazing how long plants & humans have coexisted but never learned how to speak each other's language," said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor. "Until the visitor."
"It's different than other cultures, isn't it?" said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "That's one thing humans are great at: figuring out languages that other humans have created."
"Why is that?" said Karen.
"Well," said the doctor. "Humans have hearts and the universal language is love."
"Plants don't have hearts?" said Donovan.
"No," said the doctor. "They don’t have hearts – but they love people and music – the biochemistry angle is super messed up when you think about it."

FAILURE FILM IN 3 PARTS ~ WHERE SHOULD WE START?

1.) We knew there was trouble once we saw the fish were stoned.
2.) He could tell how your butt was touched and when. He was psychic.
3.) We boogied and barfed all night long. Cora Lynn was smoking a huge stogie and wearing a Red Lobster bib.
4.) Standing in the loneliest produce aisle in Vancouver, Marnie started crying brown Kroger tears on the ripe honeydew.
5.) The mayor of Kickflip Bay christened the hill Fakie Mountain.
6.) Grandma began growing a beard after a month of drinking nothing but Heineken tallboys. We thought the moustache was a bit much but she refused to stop the hair experiment.

"If you like the cut of our jib, you'll love what was revealed to us in perpetuity!"

THE SUMMER BEFORE THE NIGHT ECSTASY BECAME ILLEGAL IN THE STATE OF TEXAS BY D.C BERMAN

My friend Kyle always had a lot of money and could get me into the expensive kind of trouble without the trouble sticking. He didn't mind paying for me if it meant raising hell with loyal company. We were seventeen. You only needed one reason to be friends at that age. I figured we had at least three. So we broke the law every day in every way and laughed our asses off at the fucking stupid world. My friend Kyle always had a lot of money and could get me into the expensive kind of trouble without the trouble sticking. He didn't mind paying for me if it meant raising hell with loyal company. We were seventeen. You only needed one reason to be friends at that age. I figured we had at least three. So we broke the law every day in every way and laughed our asses off at the fucking stupid world.

In late April we began to hear rumours about a new drug in the Metroplex. It was in the gay bars. Kids at the Arts Magnet were getting it. Certain people at certain parties had it and it was magical.

They called it X. it was supposed to make you unaccountably happy and tolerant of everyone from headbangers to rich fucks. Even 'douchebags'.

Psychiatrists had been using it in therapy for years, we were told. It was a legal and local product (it was still special to Texas at that time). It would make you love and accept anyone. Even yourself.

This was a complicated promise for the teenager roiling with hate and confusion. I hardly believed it. But one night Kyle pulled out some foil holding four tablets, we each swallowed two, and went to a party where a lot of people were going to be doing it.

Coming around the corner of that house, I'll never forget the scene. Every high-school rule was being broken before me. The lions were chatting up the lambs. I saw sworn enemies talking like long-time companions; a prickly society bitch on her knees sifting white garden pebbles through her hands with happy eyes; a brutal wrestler from my school with his arms wrapped around the trunk of a pecan tree, saying his first words to me ever, 'Hi David', sweetly, as I walked by.

I rolled my jeans up to my knees and sat at the edge of the pool. Maybe for the first time I felt like no one was going to try to push me in. The stereo was playing 'Blues for Allah' instead of the customary 'Eliminator'. Nearby, two linebackers were confessing how much they depended on each other 'on and off the field'. I felt myself giving in to all the kindness, not caring if it was a lie or not. By the time a hot Fort Worth Jewess sprang into my lap and began running her fingers through my hair I was sold.

At sunrise, I came in through the sliding glass. I woke my father and his new bride, apologised for staying out all night, and pulled a chair up beside the bed. I continued to sit there and smile down on them. I said, 'I just want you to know how much I love you, Dad.' Incredibly, he did not kick my ass. That morning was never mentioned again.

As I said before, ecstasy was still legal and as such carried virtually no stigma. Kyle's uncle kept a jar of tablets on his desk at his car dealership. Law-abiding adults were taking them at the North Dallas cocktail parties. They were even sold behind the bars like cigarettes and openly hawked on street corners downtown.

That summer, I crushed two sports cars with my homely Buick, received six speeding tickets (three in one day), two tickets for public urination, impregnated a Collin County judge's daughter, and had a bottle of MD 20/20 broken over my head. Approximately none of it registered with me. A very real fault of the drug.

I'm going to skip the scenes of me chasing daisies and singing to stray dogs from still bulldozer cabs. I was exercising horses that summer for cash, and X hangovers were A-OK for barrelling over the dull scrubland.

Sometime in August, the lawmakers in Austin finally got around to outlawing ecstasy. What a gift for the dealers! The price of ecstasy immediately quadrupled and the production costs plummeted as the manufactures began cutting the pills with all manner of horrible stuff.

The night the law went through, I went to a concert at the Bronco Bowl and snagged two of the newly illegal pills for a dear price. I had never seen them in capsules and had no idea it was a sign they were crushing the old 'legal' pills and mixing them laxatives, mannitol, low-grade speed, whatever.

Once inside, I spent a half-hour wiggling my way to the front of the floor. Unfortunately, when I got there I had a big problem. Not only were the drugs not kicking in, they were causing me to have to shit real bad. Michael Stipe was singing 'Moon River' (hey!) a cappella and I knew that I was going to blow if I didn't part this shoulder-to-shoulder crowd and make it to the restroom. The audience was frozen in place and dead silent as I plowed through, 'Excuse me, excuse me, emergency here please, please' (I think I even yelled 'gangway', such was my ambition to get through), completely stepping on the vocalist's Ethel Merman star turn and nearly getting shhhhhed to death.

I passed the rest of the concert in a nasty stall gritting my teeth, sweating and coming to terms with what was clearly the symbolic end of a spaced-out summer.

Fifteen years on, I can honestly say I'm glad it was outlawed. After three months of its use I had lost all discretion and was prepared to trust about anyone. Worse yet, it was turning me into a joiner. That's not who I am. Anyway, ecstasy was not to find its true customer base until years later, when the strangely passive kids who grew up in the child protectorate of the U.S. eighties and nineties came of age, craving depersonalisation. Apparently it helps them dance. They're a very attractive lot. Have you seen them dance?