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[wickedflea]

A mention of PETA just reminded me of an MSU environmental group called SCAPE that got busted one time. You see, they were concerned about the air pollution (read: stench) cause by some dude's hog farm, so they sneaked onto the farm one night and let all the hogs out of the barn or coop or stable or whatever you call it. But instead of frolicking in the mede like happy little hogs of freedom, they got so excited that they basically stampeded all over one another--some of them even died.

And the moral of the story is always keep your hogs on leashes.

The closet thing to this that I ever did was wander around cow pastures in search of psylocybin mushrooms. They grow like crazy around Starkville, but I never had a lot of luck finding them. But I tried, goddamnit. I remember wandering around in a muddy cow pasture in the dead of night with Fool and Tim looking for mushrooms. I remember this one time when all these cows sneaked up and surrounded us. They were the stealthiest cows I've ever encountered. They were peaceful, though, and eventually let us go on our way. Then there was the time that we visited Mr. Purnell's cow pasture. Mr. Purnell was a drunken, fatass former football coach who taught science. Purnell used to drive his school bus between buildings of the middle school because he was too lazy to walk. They were a couple of hundred yards apart at most. I never had him for science, but in the ninth grade I got stuck in his study hall. Purnell had an unholy affliction: he loved to paddle people, and he would hit them very hard. He used to paddle Roxanne Trice almost every single day, and I know it was just to watch her ass shake. He once paddled Wayne Edmonds (who, coincidentally, was rumored to have fucked a cow--hence his nickname, Elsie) for farting. That's straight-up cruel to paddle a man for farting (not to mention risky). Anyway, Tim, Kenneth, and I took a trip out to his cow pasture, which was the only place we knew that these mushrooms grew. I had taken one previous trip out there, but as soon as I came out of the woods and sprinted into the field, some girl on a tractor screamed at me and told me to get my white ass out of there. Anyway, on this particular night we decided to go in Kenneth's late-70s Camaro for some inexplicable reason. This was the loudest car I'd ever been in. You know that muscle-car sound: wobwobwobwobwobwobwob. So instead of parking on the side of the highway and walking down the gravel road that went by their house, we drove right down there. What the hell, we figured--it's three in the morning. Everybody's gotta be asleep, right? About halfway down the road I jumped out of the car. "All right, I'm gonna go find some," I said. "You guys turn around so we're facing the right way when we leave, and wait for me here."

So I made my way through the vines, bushes, and trees that separated the gravel road from the pasture. I expertly maneuvered my way over the barbed-wire fence and ran out in the field to find some fungal treasure. And sure enough, there's that same voice yelling at me to get my white ass out of there. "Shit," I thought, and started trudging back toward the fence. Only after I heard the shotgun blast did I pick up my pace. I've never been known for my speed--my nickname one year in Dixie League baseball was "Cool Breeze" because of my languid pace--but I was HAULING ASS that night, my brothers. I got out to the gravel road and those saps hadn't even made their way back yet. There they are inching along, and I'm standing in the middle of the road and violently waving my hands back toward me in an effort to apprise them of the urgency of the situation. My eyes must have been as wide as cantaloupes as Kenneth took his sweet-ass time. Wobwobwobwobwobwobwob. Finally they got there, I jumped in the car, and we got the hell out of Dodge.

I think Kenneth and Tim were surprised at how mad I was when we got back to my house. I was SO PISSED that mean-ass Purnell wouldn't share his bounty of shrooms with us. But in retrospect, I can understand why he was so angry. It's really a good thing that Purnell didn't get ahold of me; he probably thought I was Wayne Edmonds trying to get some livestock lovin'.

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[wickedflea.livejournal.com]

Well, it's started--that's about all I can say at this point. But really going to buckle down over the holidays. Can't wait for 5 p.m. Wednesday--no freelance stuff to do, no money to spend, no relatives in for Thanksgiving--nothing to do but write! (That's my spin, and I'm stickin' to it.)