by Rudy Rucker and Marc Laidlaw
11,600 Words
COPYRIGHT 1996
Version 10, April 6, 1996
Carlo the homeless artist was walking on the beach late
one day in February with a tinfoil pipe and the last crumbs of a
sinsemilla bud in the pouch of his sweatshirt when a family of
tourists came strolling up the beach snapping electronic strobe
pictures of the crashing majestic sea. Against the dazzling orange
luster of the failing sunset and the crazy backwards arching
gyrations of the foam flecks seemingly caught --- imprisoned! ---
in the harsh thyristor beams, the Flintstones-like family seemed
not only ludicrous but offensive, threatening all the peaceful
possibilities of this beach, spoiling the end of Carlo's hard-
worked, wasted day. On impulse he seized a gnarled log of salt-
sodden driftwood and waved it over his head like a caveman's
club (not that any caveman, probably, would have been so aware
of the club's contours as Carlo, who was wondering helplessly,
as he approached the brightly clad middle Americans, if the club
mightn't be buffed to a fine sheen, blow-torched ever so slightly
to enhance the natural weathering, coated with varnish, and sold
at the weekly Surf City flea market), and bore down screaming
on all the kith and kin and ilk and issue of Farmer Brownshirt,
which redoubtable gentlemen gracefully sidestepped Carlo's mad
plunge, plucked the weapon from his impassioned grasp, and
coolly laid a dam across Carlo's raging, stoned, grandiose stream
of consciousness.
As a Surf City taxpayer --- he paid sales tax, didn't he? --
- Carlo had every theoretical right to expect the police to take his
side, but no, no, no, not with pot in his pocket. The voters of
Surf City had recently approved an initiative to become a DFZ,
or "Drug-Free Zone."
This story really rocked! Read stuff by my dad: he's cool.
Too bad you all have to wait to read the whole story. I'll have a link to it if it goes up anywhere.