Igcenzio was just a little south of the equator about 800 miles or so from the vortex. As we spiraled in, the surface of Proxima unreeled below us. “Looks to be mostly desert,” Talon observed. “Yeah,” I agreed with a nod.

It was true, aside from the watersheds near the “oceans” most of the planet was covered by ruddy rock. Alluvial plains shot red fingers into the greenish blue waters. Closeups provided by Talon showed the desert areas dominated by scrubby bush that blanketed the land from horizon to horizon. Dried riverbeds showed there had been water on this planet in the past—and not so long ago as you might think.

The first settlers, in order to build the great production installations that make Proxima the manufacturing hub it is in this part of the galaxy, sold off about 75% of the natural water there. It might not sound like the brightest idea in the box but this is a fairly common practice considering how valuable water is these days. That’s just considering it’s value as fuel, not taking into account the myriad other uses there are for it.

“Locking into Igcenzio traffic pattern,” Talon reported as she shifted into the inbound corridor of the docking facility, still following Moon’s Leggo ship. “Final in 5 minutes . . . Igcenzio control on the com.”

I fielded the tower’s questions to their satisfaction and was given a berth for Talon. Moon and I would both deship at the Igcenzio version of Grand Central Station. Talon would find her own way to her berth as would Moon’s ship, which he called “Shakara,” by the way.

Talon touched down like a ballerina. Shakara was already down and a hatch was opening from which Moon stepped down to the plasmac. I unbuckled and popped the hatch. I noticed I was grinning, I was happy to see my old friend and as I shook his hand I remembered all the reasons he was such and it gave me a real good feeling. Good friends just don’t grow on trees.

The ships quietly lifted away and Moon and I headed for the slidewalks.

For as graceful a character as Moon is, his ship was an antithesis. The shoe-boxy, blocky, sort of rectangular construct looked assembled out of Leggos. Not totally out of the question, actually, so much is built with an infinite size range of those constructors these days. (Heh, remind me to tell you about the Leggo Wars!)

A face appeared on a virtual screen that popped up on the Viz to my left, Moon’s narrow Hexalian face inscrutable as ever. Good old Moon, I thought as I took in the small zoolander lips chiseled onto his faintly blue skin. He had a very flat nose, nostrils almost slits, with not much more than a sharp ridge running the length of it from the brow of his large, deep set, vertically iris-ed, golden eyes. They seemed to be looking right through me.

“Well?” I queried.

“I’ve been here for three planetary days already,” the blue mask stated with extreme economy of motion.

He looked really excited . . . You have to know Moon, almost nothing can break him out of his supernatural serenity.

For example, once we were chasing scavs out on some obscure rim world, Kronk’s World or something like that, and after whipping through vicious crystal spike warrens, through volcanic tubules, crumbling rock canyons and all kinds of nasty dangerous stuff we’d managed to kill all of the band but the leader who, at the time, was still giving us a bit of difficulty.

Moon and I were on hover speeders, and he, with his rather aerodynamic build, was in the lead. We were very close to our quarry but still not quite in striking distance. Then the scav thrust jumped onto a local freeway and zipped into the nearby small town. I guess he thought he could give us the slip in the narrow streets.

Moon darted away to the left and I stayed on the scav’s tail. The scav took a left and Moon dropped down on him as he turned the corner, his much heavier vehicle making a nice paté of the scav.

There were locals standing around on the street, gawking, as Moon calmly got off his speeder, went up to one of them and asked, “What time do you have?” He was told. “Thank you,” he said as he turned and calmly, stepping carefully over various globs of scav, returned to the speeder and took off.

Like, give me a cheeseburger, eh? No problem, yawn . . . I have to tell you it took me the rest of the day to work off the adrenaline buzz I had worked up. Heh!

“So what makes you so happy?” I asked.

“Not happy, concerned.”

I waited for more . . . dum de dum . . . “Okay,” I said, “why are you concerned?”

“You see the flame vortex in the southern hemisphere?”

“Sure, what’s that green stuff?”

“Some kind of biological weapon. It’s being generated by the vortex.” Moon turned and looked at something off camera. When he turned back, a smooth swiveling motion, he said, “If unchecked it will totally destroy the planetary biology.”

“Ahh,” I said, understanding dawning on me. Starc has people here, family. So does the Babe. “Where’s Starc?”

“I’m here to take you in,” Moon said, turning once again off camera, then, “We’re to rendezvous in Igcenzio.” With that the vid blanked and his Leggo batch began to drop out of orbit.

“Follow him in,” I said. Talon clucked, she’d been doing that lately, “Indeed.”

Mmmmmm, I love cheeseburgers! Talon pops them out whenever I want and she does it just right! Mmmm MM!

Coruscating coronas of multicolored light flashed past Talon’s Visio, the nearly 360 degree information display wrapping the pilot’s seat.

Her current setting was to display, adjusted to human vision, of course, the surrounding radiant energies received. I’m basically sitting here in the pilot’s chair, munching a cheeseburger, manual controls visible before me, sailing through quantum fractional space. I gotta tell you it’s like LSD without any LSD.   🙂

I watched the light show for a few seconds and then Talon announced, “Entering quantum totality in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .” The light show abruptly faded and I found myself sitting in space, that wonderful, so, so black carpet studded with so, so brilliant diamonds. Proxima was away in the distance, a bright speck on the horizontal about 2 o’clock from Wilson’s Star, the system’s centerpiece.

“Take us in, kiddoe.”

“Indeed,” Talon stated factually, then she added, “Leaving our assigned shift coordinates now.” I felt nothing, thanks to Talon’s inertial fractioning, as my POV began to accelerate toward the blip that was Proxima. We were soon in orbit.

Proxima, what a dirtball! The only color other than ruddy brown peeking through the dusky cloud cover were blue green fringes around the pitifully small oceans, not much more than big lakes really,  that dotted the surface below. There were tiny caps at the poles, like some crazy monk with a double tonsure. Heh, figure that out will ya?!

I noticed a green haze covering a large area in the southern hemisphere. It seemed larger after a few more orbits. That can’t be good, I thought. The patch was circular in shape and in the center was a great conflagration, a plume of evil black smoke rising high into the atmosphere.

“We are not alone,” Talon said and showed a translucent figure taking shape off the port bow.

“Hail the boat,” I greeted cordially. There was no reply. “Hail the boat,” I repeated. The vehicle to my left rezzed the rest of the way into the visible spectrum and I recognized it immediately. “Moon, you son of a bitch, say something!”

(Here’s one of those short stories I was telling you about.)

“Next,” said the clerk sitting behind window number 8—eighth out of the ten windows that lined the wall of the Birthday Bureau processing center. The woman in front of the line of five moved about ten feet from the red line painted on the floor up to the window.

Though an older woman, beyond ‘mature,’ she still had some rusty color laced through her silvering hair. She stood straight, proud and dignified but not arrogant, and was wearing a teacher’s dark purple tunic. Several insignia showed she taught with distinction. The loose, sagging flesh of her neck and jowls did not detract from her alert blue eyes, or her tight lips. Was it worry that tensed her brow, that made the fine lines of the crow’s feet around her eyes a little deeper?

The  clerk looked up with a droopy, uninterested stare. He was a large, bulky man. A dark fringe of hair ringed his shiny bald head and matched the color of the bushy mustache that adorned his pudgy face. A dusty yellow civil tunic along with the short little maroon and chartreuse tie denoting a level 4 civil servant draped his considerable paunch. “Victor Poochm,” proclaimed his nametag.

“ID, please,” Victor Poochm said.

The woman placed her thumb on the plate mounted in the ledge in front of the plasteel window. The clerk scanned the holo, transparent from the woman’s point of view, that projected before him. “Look into the retinal scanner, please.” A green square appeared on the window and the woman leaned forward slightly to look directly at the highlight.

“Very good,” said Victor, “now your personal cloud, please.”

She placed the data crystal implanted in her right forearm over the data scanner mounted in the ledge next to the thumbprint plate. With a flash the scanner uploaded the facts, details, and data of her entire life since the crystal was implanted at age three. The three methods of identification would be matched against records. Her personal cloud would be updated and stored for future reference.

“You are 85 years old today,” Victor Poochm said. “Happy birthday,” he added mechanically. “Good of you to check in—Rebecca Hoosier. Your 85^th birthday is a very important date for you.”

“I’m required by law to report to the Birthday Bureau every year just like everyone else.” She looked over her shoulder then back, there were at least 40 to 50 people in the center. “As you well know. So let’s cut the chit chat and get to business.” Her eyes squinted down just the tiniest little bit and her lips pulled tighter.

“The Birthday Bureau was instituted nearly a century ago to review citizens’ performance on a yearly basis.” Victor reeled off the statement he’d made countless times before. “It’s the citizens’ duty to perform to the best of their abilities and to report here on their birthdays. We don’t support those who don’t contribute. It’s pretty simple.”

She glared at him. “Just get to it,” she said.

Deadpan, the clerk said: “You are a teacher.” The woman continued to glare at him, her lips pulling inward at the corners. “You’ve had a good career it seems,” he went on. “Had a hand in the education of several thousand citizens in your lifetime. Some of your students have risen to social prominence.”

“The record is what it is.”

Victor looked over the holo projection for a moment then said, “Unfortunately, Rebecca, in spite of your good performance, we don’t need your services anymore and you are dismissed.” He spoke in a bored, mechanical tone, he’d said this many times in the past. “Your records are updated and you are now officially unemployed.” He looked at the woman through the holo with an “anything else?” expression.

“Dismissed?” she said, unbelieving in spite of knowing its inevitability. “Dismissed?” she reiterated with more force. “Dismissed? I taught the damn president!” By now her eyes were squinted to slits and her lips were but a thin, straight line. Citizens in the center, as well as bureau strongarms scattered about the room turned to see what was happening.

“You did indeed help educate our current president, madam. You’ve obviously done a fine job,” the clerk said, nervously glancing up at the overhead monitor that recorded everything. “However, there are many eminently qualified, much younger teachers that need jobs. You’ve reached your mandatory retirement age.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly useless.”

Victor sighed. “As far as society is concerned, Rebecca, I’m afraid that it does. We can’t afford to support aging and failing citizens any more than we can support the disabled or the malingerers.”

“I’m not failing and I’m certainly not a malingerer!”

“Perhaps not at the moment. But statistics show a significant drop . . .”

“Statistics be damned!” Rebecca said, eyes flashing.

Victor let it go, he’d been through the argument too many times before. In an effort to defuse it he said contritely, “I can’t help the way things are.”

The woman stood silent for a moment, her thoughts almost visible. “So what am I to do now?” she said quietly.

“That’s up to you to decide, ma’am. Do you have relatives who will take you in?” Grim, she shook her head. The clerk looked at the holo, “How about your savings?”

“As you can see,” she said bitterly, “at the triple premium unemployed must pay for goods and services it might last about a year.”

“Insurance?” he asked.

“Insurance! Ha! Who can afford to pay the pirates?”

Victor shook his head. “It’s a shame we can’t support citizens who no longer earn their living, but the truth is they drag us down and we’re much better off not carrying the weight. You know this, you’re a teacher, you teach it to our citizens. We simply can’t afford to support anyone who is not contributing to the common good.” He waved across his desktop and cleared his holo. “My advice to you, ma’am, is this: enjoy the year or so you have left and then do what everyone else does.”

“Turn myself in to the Deathday Bureau? Have a Deathday Party?” she said, appalled at finally uttering the thoughts that had been dominating her private moments for the past several years.

“It’s much better to do it voluntarily than the alternatives, believe me. What else can you do?” he asked.

“I’ll damned well think of something!” she said as she turned and walked away, her disconsolate carriage belying her fighting spirit.

“Next.” Victor Poochm yawned.

It was my turn.

Am I the only person on the planet that thinks Bruce Jenner is crazy as hell? I mean the lights are on but no one’s home, as a loon, not playing with a full deck, minus a place setting, screws loose and falling out, wrapped TOO tight, and, in general, just totally non compos mentis?

Really?

CC

I’ve finished my May writing challenge and have learned quite a bit. I’ve learned there’s plenty of material to write about; also, it’s important not to paint yourself into a corner by restricting yourself to certain styles, genres, etc.

It was fun coming up with something different every time. Because I set the goal for myself and was consistent with the daily effort, I got to practice using different literary devices such as alliteration, suspense, onomatopoeia,  POV, foreshadowing, etc., and, more importantly, was aware of what I was doing.

Sitting there in front of the “White Bull” and wondering how to deface that pure unblemished space can be a daunting experience. But I found that all you have to do is start writing something–the first thing that comes into your mind and before you know it the words begin to flow. This presupposes, of course, you have something to say in life. If you don’t, well, maybe you shouldn’t be trying to write.

Other benefits I got from my exercise were several segments of a background story I’ve been writing to tie together a collection of my short stories called “Virtual Life.” They dealt with a rescue party sent to aid the people in a neighboring village beset by savage barbarians.

All in all, if you’re into writing, I recommend the exercise heartily! Write a story every day. Don’t over reach, keep the word count low, 500 to 1,000 words.

I’ll be focusing on music for the time being and my story creation will have to take a back seat. Nevertheless, I shall try to do at least one story per week for June and we’ll see how that works out. I think perhaps I’ll make the stories a little longer.

Fare well in all you do!

Chitlin Child

The old step van breasted the hill on Hill Street and rolled across the small level stretch at the top. It rolled past nice, tree nestled residences. The wide residential street had plenty of room for parking but the residents here keep their cars in driveways, carports, and garages. No cars were parked on the street. A worn brake line ruptures and the van’s braking system begins to fail . . .

The ball. The pretty red ball. It’s so round and it bounces! Kick! And away it goes! It hits the wall and here it comes back to me. Ha! It bounces on the ground. It’s a pretty red ball.

“Cissy!” her mother calls from the kitchen window.

“I coming mommy!”

“You don’t have to come in, honey” mom calls through the screening. “Just remember don’t go near the street.”

The long hill stretches out and down, the step van begins its descent. The driver, just finished lunch, is digging at his teeth with a toothpick. A good driver, he wasn’t going too fast when he started down the incline.

“I bemember, mommy.”

Kick the ball! It’s so red. Nothing that red. And it bounces. Boing! And I can catch it.

The child is naked except for a grimy huggie. There is a dog lying in the shade with its head on crossed paws and watching the child. The dog is tethered to a screw-in peg and the ground in its territory is dusty dirt.

About a quarter way down the hill the driver taps his brakes. The brakes seemed a little soft. He pumped them a little and felt the van slowing.

Throw the ball at Winston. Ha! Catch, Winnie! Aww, c’mon, Winnie.

The dog looks up, snuffles a little. The ball hits the wall and bounces up and over the child.

The extra pressure exploded the ruptured brake line, spewing the remaining fluid. The driver felt the brake pedal sink to the floor and the speed of the van begin to increase. He pumped twice more and nothing!

The ball bounces! Ha! You can’t get away from me!

The child chases the ball toward the street with an awkward, stilting step. The dog lifts its head.

“Oh God!” The driver shouts out loud. “No brakes!” He’s looking ahead to see what’s coming and nothing in the way so far, all the while furiously pumping the useless brake pedal.

The ball is almost clear of the yard and crossing the sidewalk. The dog leaps up and runs, barking, to the end of its tether, coming within scant inches from the receding child.

By now the driver realizes his life is on the line and the adrenaline kicks in. In his mid twenties, he’s no rocket scientist but he’s far from stupid. For one thing, He’s always been able to remain calm in crisis. When everyone else is screaming hysterically he always seemed to be able to figure things out and save the day. He thought he’d better start saving today as soon as possible!

Red ball! Hahahahaaa! I get it!

The dog barks at the laughing child. The ball crosses the sidewalk and takes a little bounce as it drops off the curb. The child is about to cross the sidewalk. The child’s mother sees what’s going on and shouts, screams, “Cissy!” She drops the dish that shatters on the floor as she leaps for the back door.

He grabs the emergency brake and pulls it straight, he can feel a little drag but it’s nowhere near enough. He looks up and sees the ball in the street in front of him, then he looks over and sees the child following it. “Oh shit,” he said.

Red ball in street. Must get it! Mommy said don’t go in street. Red ball! So pretty!

He uses his foot to knock the brake loose then he leans down and rapidly puts a few turns on the tension adjuster. Pulling the brake handle he finds now it’s too tight and . . .

The child stumbles off the curb and rushes headlong into the street, awkwardly trying to regain her balance. She sees the truck.

Big truch! Big truch!

The dog jumps and barks. Mom is halfway there.

Too late! I’m about to run over a kid chasing a ball! The oldest story there is . . .

Cissy doesn’t regain her balance and falls down spread eagled, about a third of the way across the street. The old step van is barely ten feet away. Suddenly the van veers hard to the left, steering away from the fallen child. The turn is too sudden, however, and G-force drags the van over in what seems to be slow motion, narrowly missing the child by only a few inches. The van settles on its side and slides thirty yards or so down the street, finally hitting the curb and coming to a careening stop.

Sitting sideways with the seat belt pressing hard into his stomach, the driver realizes he’s okay. That was a close one. Boss’ll be pissed.

This week’s Massacre of the Week comes from the City of Light in France. It seems two young men, brothers, had an axe to grind with a satirical magazine called “Charlie Hebdo.” These two nuts, now martyrs to their cause, have brought down the wrath of Allah upon the infidels who dared make fun of their barbaric religious fanaticism. Said wrath promoted more than a dozen people to room temperature.

The free world recoiled in shock and horror as the scene, beginning to get old by repetition, played out on the International stage. Police in riot gear with automatic weapons are becoming commonplace, not only in Paris but almost anywhere you go.

One of the pictures filtering down through the Interslush depicted a crowd holding up signs that spelled out, “We are not afraid.”

Give the French some credit here. It takes some grit to get slammed to the ground, get right back up and say, “bring it, bitches.”

It’s the only attitude we can afford because we, anyone who desires liberty, are at war with an amorphous, insidious, vicious group of people bent on returning the world to the Middle Ages.

What do these people want? Do they really want everyone to carry around some beads and a little rug so we can pray toward Mecca on the hour of every day? Do they really want women to be again relegated to cattle, mentally and physically, to be owned? Will slavery once again become commonplace?

Wealthy and powerful people are financing this jihad against the bulwarks of liberty, people who, apparently, want it all. Worse, they think they have a chance to get it.

Evil often gets the upper hand in our history. There are plenty of examples and no need to go into them here. However, History shows us evil is always destroyed in the end by ordinary human beings who just want to get on with their lives and don’t give a rat’s patootie about the ludicrous beliefs of Legion.

What would be the consequences of turning the other cheek? Dire, at first, and the main reason people choose the “eye for an eye” approach being taken at present. What would be the consequences of showing love to terroristic transgressors instead of retaliation? Would the forces ranged against us just mow us down, every last man, woman, and child? Or would they?

To change a man you must change his heart. Can that really be done with oppression, barbarism, and merciless brutality? You may well be able to do it, but the change in heart you engender will not produce the results you desire.

S’all for now . . .

I looked out my back door this morning and winter revealed itself in full glory, shaking its frozen dandruff all over like a Times Square party. About an inch had accumulated by the time I glimpsed it and I was glad I got a new snow shovel about a month ago.

Snow shovels are such necessary items when you live in the northern climes. There are so many from which to choose. Most of the ones I saw when shopping were made of plastic. PLASTIC??!!! Guaranteed to break after one season, you mean? I wanted a shovel that would do the job for many seasons. You could throw money at the problem but even the high-end, cleverly designed for ease of use, etc., were made of materials that would not stand the test of time.

Back in the early 1980’s I was boarding during a hiatus from the road band work I’d been doing. It was a nice break–hotel rooms, the food, the nightclubs, the road, the people, band mates, and all that blur into a treadmill and it can get old pretty quick.

My keyboard player, Lawrence Hess, a few years younger than I and gifted with musical talent as well as perfect pitch (he could tell you what tone that fart was), had joined another band and was traveling. His father, Lawrence senior, gave me a cot up in their attic and there I stayed for several months until Lawrence junior returned from the band that had crashed and burned.

(This was a pivotal point in my life because, with Lawrence and a gifted drummer named Russel Yohe, we then began a road trip that lasted several years as a trio called “Pure Magic.” More later . . . )

My duties in the household, a way to earn my keep, included stacking and moving firewood around (they had a Franklin stove in their living room that heated the entire building), shoveling snow and just about anything else Lawrence senior could think of. I cleaned and pointed his chimney during that time.

Old man Hess had a couple of coal shovels, one of which I used as a snow shovel. The handle had a T-shaped grip and you could shovel a lot of snow with it. Ordinary snow shovels have a straight handle and sometimes balancing a big shovel full of snow, due to the lopsided weight, can be problematic because the handle rotates in your wet gloves  and dumps the cargo back on the sidewalk.

I never forgot that little lesson. Coal shovels are made of steel and in consequence are fairly heavy. I was young then and the exercise was good for me.

So, there on the rack at WalMart, I spied what a sticker called a “scoop.” I believe it could also have been called a “grain shovel,” as the scoop was made of aluminum. It had a short T grip like the coal shovels but it was plastic so I rejected it at the time.

I shopped around a little more, going to hardware stores, etc., and most of them didn’t even have coal shovels, let alone a grain shovel. So I went back to WalMart, swallowed my pride, and bought the scoop, plastic handle and all. It cost about $30, the median price for a plastic “snow” shovel.

Today my new shovel, “the Iceman,” had its baptism of fire ( 😀 ) as I shoveled the 25-30 yard walk from my back door to the parking lot where I park my car. The shovel was light and so was the snow and I removed about 2 inches of snow from the walk in about 15 minutes. I’ll have to repeat that in a bit as it’s still snowing.

If I could have found my ideal shovel the handle would have been longer, the short handle of my new shovel makes me stoop a little. Being metal, snow stuck to it and I had to give it a little tap to unload it into the yard. Those issues are small negatives in my mind and, though I’m not so young these days, I can still use the exercise. I expect to have that shovel for a long time–at least until the plastic handle breaks! (I’m told there are no snow shovels in hell, so that will be a relief!)

I wrote a little poem about how I feel about snow and it appears on the poetry page of this blog. Check it out, it’s cute.

S’all for now . . .

2014 is winding down, here in North America winter is gathering its forces, having already stretched its muscles with tons of snow in November across nearly the whole continent.

You need a couple good parties to face winter’s frigid, stalactite, stalagmite grin, eh? Indeed.

After we kiss and hug all of our loved ones, open all the presents, eat all the food, drink all the booze and generally put aside the challenges of the upcoming season, we’ll wake up on January 2, 2015, recover from our excesses, and move forward–one step at a time. You almost have to be a stoic at that point.

2014 has been a year of change–for the world and for me as well. Enough about me already.

The Internet, through social media, takes more and more precedence in our way of life here in the States and around the globe and moral questions like “Freedom of Speech,” “the right to privacy,” and “Racial Profiling” are being redefined.

It’s scary. The predictions of Orwell, Bradbury, and Huxley are becoming realities as we speak. Fear is rampant, everyone is afraid of something, eh? As we strive to make our lives safe and secure we’re giving up our individual freedoms one little bite at a time. How long before we find ourselves in a paranoid, barricaded, police state?

Add to that the impending restructuring of the global economy, good for us all in the long run but problematic for the individuals living through it, namely you and me, and the rosy future looks a little faded, to say the least.

Look at the Anne Frank quote from my post about Vonnegut’s “Galapagos.” In spite of the horrific life she led, she still believed that human nature is basically good. I must agree.

There are good, hopeful, and inspiring stories permeating the news all the time. However, the “massacre of the week,” the great catastrophe, the beheading, the hacking, and all the other evidence of our “dark side” overshadows any ray of sunshine. It’s more fun to contemplate Bill Cosby’s sexual appetite than the reason that bell ringer from the Salvation Army stands out in the freezing rain in front of Walmart.

Malala Yousafzai was riding a school bus when some maniac shot her in the head for being a female who wanted to get an education. What in the hell were they thinking? It’s much easier to control and manipulate bovine cattle than informed and intelligent human beings? Fortunately Malala survived, continued her education in spite of adversity and ultimately, as the youngest person ever, won the Nobel Peace Prize! From darkness comes light.

Secret Santas, Layaway Angels, and other philanthropists purchase gifts and give away diamond jewelry to help the poor.

A black woman extends her condolences to the families of police officers assassinated by her “disturbed” son. This is in stark contrast to the pitiful parents of vicious children, taught by abuse and neglect to disrespect and malign everyone and everything, who jump into and bask in the glory of the national spotlight.

People do good things all the time. It’s a shame that it’s unimportant.

So, what can I do? I think the answer is: “just keep on keeping on.” I’ll continue to try to treat the other guy as I wish to be treated, judge people (inasmuch as I must) by nothing more than their actions and do my best to stay positive.

So merry Christmas everyone! Have a happy New Year!

You can’t change the past. You can change the future but the only time you have to do it is now.

ChitlinChild