we left before daybreak on a buckskin and a roan
past tall shivering pines where mockingbirds moan
past dark cabin windows where eyes never see
across the blue mountains to the allegheny

The humans are coming apart. Literally. It is like "I Fall To Pieces," or "She's Come Undone." Only worse.

Do you think I am Lying? Then take a look at this:

This is not a photoshop, or trick photography, or anything, at all, of that sort. It is Real.

People who press their eyeballs very close to the Google Maps, they discovered this. That on the beaches and the streets of the world, the bodies of the humans, they are disassembling.

Now, it is creepy, and it is wrong, that you cannot go to the beach, or out on a street, any more, without being Spied On, and Captured, by the google people.

But, in this instance, the google people, they have provided a Service. Documenting the worldwide disintegration, and malformation, of the humans.

Why, you might ask, is this Happening? What does it Mean? And, can it be Stopped?

It is happening because we are in the midst of a Fringe crisis. Fringe is the true-life documentary series that meticulously records the effects of the commingling of this universe, with a neighboring universe, creating many Wrong Badnesses in both. These Badnesses range from people coming apart at the seams, all over the streets and the beaches, to The Hairball. The Hairball—he is quite definitely, a Fringe event.

This all has to do—naturally—with a Science Man, and his son. The young son dies of a dread disease in this universe, and the Science Man then crosses over to the next universe, to kindly administer a Potion to the dying young son over there. But the Potion, it Breaks. So, instead, the Science Man, he Steals the alternate son, to bring him over to this universe, where he can get more Potion. But they fall through some ice, and the alternate son, he would drown. Except a semi-human from the future, known as an Observer, he—illegally—Interferes, and saves the boy. Which creates even more ripples in space/time, causing even more bodies to fall apart on the streets and beaches, and springing forth even more Hairballs. It is all very complicated, and I have neither the time nor the space to explain it all here: you will just have to watch the documentary yourself. Suffice it to say, it gets worse before it gets better, but it works out alright in the end. Because isn't that always the way of it?

In the meantime: fasten your seat belts. For anything can happen. And so, it will.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9AlMtFi2rM]

Among these happenings is that, and even as they were coming apart, last year the Americans nonetheless put on a collective 582 million pounds. That is the equivalent of 1400 blue whales. Some 28 percent of the United States humans, they are now officially obese; nearly half of all the men humans, they weigh more than 200 pounds.

I am trying to look on the bright side, here. And that bright side concerns the asteroids. There has been much tsuris in the tubes, of late, about what if an asteroid comes, and hits the earth, and all the humans then become petroleum products, like happened with the dinosaurs? There is much fear, and trembling, over this scenario. The Science Men, being men, are developing all these Plans involving shooting or ramming the asteroids. Because men, they are all about shooting, and ramming.

But I have an alternative idea. What if we used the blue-whale people? If the Science Men, they were to See, through a Space Spy Tube, that an asteroid is coming, then The Hairball, and his assistant, Jan Brewer, because these two like the idea of putting people aboard trains so much, they could be assigned to supervising the boxcarring of mass quantities of blue-whale people, and then transporting them to one designated area of the planet. The combined weight of the blue-whale people there might be enough to alter the earth's orbit sufficiently so that the asteroid would then whiz safely by. Someone with a Math Tool, they could probably work this out.

I realize that a possible disadvantage to this Plan is that the weight pressure of all the blue-whale people in one place could result in them crashing through the planet's surface. Which in turn would allow magma from the earth's core to seep up and start flowing over all and every. I am not sure what effect this sudden magma effusion would have on global warming, but I have to assume it would not be good.

You know: it is always something.

I am thinking that the combination of the Fringe-splintering, and the blue-whaling, of the humans, that is why the sparrows have become drug victims.

Handling the humans, this could never really have been easy, for the sparrows. But now, with the humans suddenly coming apart, even when there are no bombs or mines or wars or anything, and at the same time thundering around in more massivity than twelve herds of Bigfoots, this has caused the sparrows to Need narcotics.

I know this, because whenever I try to plant the special poppies, as soon as I turn my back, the sparrows are there, pecking and scratching. They will be there all day, until they have found and ingested every seed. Even planting in the night, I have tried, to elude the beaks of these wanton thieves. But no. As soon as the morning comes, they are right there. Do they have night-vision goggles, to see in the night? Do they have special seed-sensing noseholes? I don't know. No one will tell me.

As a result, I have never really been able to grow the special poppies here. These sparrows, they are like my version of Coleridge's man from Porlock.

The sparrows arrive in the fall, right about when the special poppies are supposed to be sown. I don't think this is a coincidence. Then they stay through the rain and the hail and the snow and the sleet of the fall and the winter, and they are real cheery, through all of it, singing and singing. This is why I don't mind their thievery. Or the fact that, to supplement the special poppy seeds, I must needs invest in herniating 50-pounds bags of other seeds, every week or so. It takes a lot of food. When you're really little. And yet you sing and you sing. All through the cold rain and snow.

Now, we are at the sad time of year, when the sparrows are taking off, to spend the summer in Mexico. I don't like it, when they leave. I don't know why they can't stick around here all year. But sparrows, they have been in this world since long before there was ever even a human. So I guess they know better than I.

Notwithstanding the sadness of the sparrow fly-off, we have as of today reached March 1, and that means we all made it through the winter, and so now everything is going to be okay. Really. Because:

march winds will blow
all your troubles away

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOVIQORfFrk]

From the YouTube comments:

I think about the children in this video. Where are they now and how are their lives?

I married one. She is brilliant, successful at everything she chooses to do.

In other realities, I think maybe there is supposed to be some more of the voting today.

The Democrats, and the Republicans, today, I think, they will both have many of the primaries, and many of the caucuses, to try to make the president.

In the Democratic version, The Mad Bomber, she is continuing her Black Like Me tour of the southern states, where they are running out of boot polish, so much of it does the Bomber and her people daily require, to slather all over their faces. The Bomber people, they are saying that if the Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man, he today does not get almost all of the votes, he should Get Out, and go back to making sandwiches, and let the Bomber march on a road of bones, alone, and in peace.

However, there is really no reason for the Deli Man to go anywhere. Because as the Bomber herself expressed it, back in May of 2008, when she was the Loser against The Kenyan: why, history, it shows, that just about Anything can Happen, in a presidential campaign, and so why not wait around, to See? Just in case, say, the front-runner, gets some bullets in the head?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyFqmp4wzI]

The Mad Bomber, she did then hire a couple of head-shooters. For The Kenyan. But it didn't work out. Because the would-be head-shooters, they got drunk, and went duck-hunting instead.

When the husband of The Mad Bomber, The Clenis, learned this, he was furious. He sought out the duck hunters, he found them, and then he covered them in concrete, and worked them into his Clinton Memorial, which is seen below.

In the Republican version, The Hairball, he is impatient to have a primary or a caucus Winnering wherein he receives more than 50% of the vote. That is why on Sunday he went on a television gibber-show and refused three times to separate himself from David Duke and other white-robed individuals who shoot and stab and slit and lynch black people. Because The Hairball, he wants the votes, of people like that. That, at least, is the theory of Runt Limprod, of all people. Limprod formerly a fervent full-throated devotee of the two-headed golden calf of The Hairball and Zed Crud. But, even Limprod, seemed thoroughly disgusted, by this one.

People who would shoot and stab and slit and lynch black people, these are the people of The Hairball. His own father, was one such. A Klan fellow, dad, who built the fortune he latter passed on to his son, The Hairball, on the backs of black people that, at minimum, he made sleep in the street.

Dad, The Hairball: the turd, as they say, doesn't fall far from the sphincter.

Speaking of turds and sphincters, I have here this book, called The Broken Bough, by Edward Keating, that asserts that the basic unhappiness of human beings can be traced back to the fact that humans are supposed to live in trees. And that is where humans lived, happily, an arboreal life, until there came a Bad climate change—presumably the dinosaurs were burning fossil fuels, or something—and then the humans had to go down and live on the ground. And the humans, they've been grumpy ever since. All that is Wrong, Keating concludes, it stems from this ground-dwelling.

Keating received this brainshower when he was kicked out of Ramparts, the magazine that he founded, so that it could be driven into oblivion by Warren Hinckle and a big slobbering hound, both of whom, I believe, still haunt North Beach to this day. (The political left then majoring in cannabilizing itself, a tradition that continues, alpha unto omega.)

Out on his ass, Keating was freed into time, time to Ponder. And, among other ponders, he pondered: why in the sam hill, for sweet creeping jeebus' sake, does it take up to two years to toilet-train a human?

And he concluded: because humans are not meant to be toilet-trained. They are meant to swing through the trees. And, like everybody else who swings through the trees, when they need to Go, they just . . . let go. The effluvium falling to the forest floor. Where it is valued as fertilizer. By the trees. In which the humans, above, do swing.

Makes sense to me.

Poi dogs, they too ponder. And they, too, come up, with some Smart things.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Tr5A0PiLs]

Supreme Court Justice Uncle Thomas, he is so unnerved by the recent sudden death of his companero, Justice Fat Fred Flintstone, who was smothered to death by a time-traveling Bill Gates in a remote Texas brothel, that yesterday, Uncle Thomas, he, for the first time in more than 10 years, asked a question during oral argument.

The question was: "Can I go to the bathroom?"

Apparently Uncle Thomas used to ask this question of Fat Fred, written on a Paper that he slipped into Fred's big meaty Hand. But now that Fred is gone, Uncle Thomas, he has to ask the question out loud.

If Uncle Thomas, he were living in the trees, like humans are supposed to, he wouldn't have to ask such a question. He could just, Go.

So I bought a polka dot plant. Because I found the pink in its leaves, fetching. I brought it home, and then I went to the books and the tubes, to find out its Laws. And, as usual, everybody had an opinion, and these opinions were so often in Conflict.

So I asked the plant itself. And it said it wanted to be right here. On this phyfe. Sort of in the back, towards the corner. Beneath the window, where the curtains are always at least a bit pulled back. So I can look out on the world. As I sit before these tubes.

And so that's where it is. And, every day, it follows the sun. Cheerfully, stretching. By sundown each night it has yearned wholly towards the sun. In the morning I turn it round, and then watch, through the day, as it slowly, but perceptibly, stretches, cheerfully, towards the sun anew.

This plant, it is impervious to Fringe events. So long as there is sun. Water. A misting, now and again. My attention.

And then, as I'm looking at it, the man comes on the radio, and he says it is Montaigne's birthday, and he says that Montaigne said, "the most certain sign of wisdom, is cheerfulness."

And I think: that sounds right.

by a knight of ghosts and shadows
i summoned am to tourney
ten leagues beyond the wide world's end
methinks it is no journey