118 lines
7.2 KiB
Plaintext
118 lines
7.2 KiB
Plaintext
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_____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________
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| ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ |
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... The Great Southern Fire God
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by John Crow
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01/01/1997-#326
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__//////\ -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- /\\\\\\__
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Est. 1984 \\\\\\/ xXx BOW to the COW xXx \////// Est. 1984
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__ _ _ __ _ _ __ _ _ __ _ _ __
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|__heal_the_sick__raise_the_dead__cleanse_the_lepers__cast_out_demons__|
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Sitting in the blue morning as the snow comes down, all I can hear -
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this morning as on all others - is the incessant noise of the city.
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Nashville. It surges upward and outward like some kind of cancerous growth
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racing towards metastasis at the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. I feel like
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the Grinch outside Whoville on Christmas morning.
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It's gotten too big. Eighteen years ago, when I came here from Orlando,
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it was a town of well under a half million. Now it's at least twice that,
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and growing by the second. The traffic seems to get worse every day. Where
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do they come from? Surely, the endless exodus from the west coast and the
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gritty industrial cities of the north cannot account for it all; they must be
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resorting to some novel form of reproduction en route.
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There! In my all-seeing eye, I spy a powder-blue 1979 LeBaron,
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southbound on I-4, crammed almost to overflowing with Yankees who have begun
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to reproduce by budding, fission, dispersal of spores, rhizomes, cuttings.
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The car sags in the middle, weaves from side to side, strains under the
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weight of the exploding horde in the back seat. Their grating nasal voices
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rise in a maddening chorus of angst and hostility as genes long-buried by
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countless millions of years of evolution spring once again to the fore,
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drawing from their animal (dare I say even vegetable) past for the tools of
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total conquest. The all-seeing eye draws back from the seething Chrysler,
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surveys the buckling interstate highway from afar: the scene is repeated in
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sedan after sedan.
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I pause to take a deep breath, calm down a little. Surely it must end
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sometime. Someday, the economic boom in the south will itself go south, and
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they will all go home. Unable to resist the lure of milder weather and the
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relentless good cheer of epidemic Prozac abuse, the Californians will go
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home. Far above the Mason-Dixon line, the foreman will slap a handful of
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grease on long-idle gears and crankshafts, and the industrial juggernaut of
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the North will spring back to life; the humming of its implacable machines
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will travel through the earth itself, awakening a million expatriate Yankee
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drones and workers, summoning them back to the hive.
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Suddenly, it will be very quiet in Nashville. Reduced to its native
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population, the town will once again be a small wooden fort on the bank of
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the Cumberland River, shivering through the winters and ever watchful for
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Indian attack in the shadow of the crumbling NFL stadium. There shall be no
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sound for most of the year but the tramping of French fur traders and the
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singing of the washerwomen by the fort, sounds easily enough lost in the
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empty labyrinth of downtown.
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And then - then in the autumn shall come the loveliest thing. Far away
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from the tiny core of the city from the Richland Historic District outward to
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the county line, the hot September wind shall blow through the tens of
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thousands of empty condominiums and cheap tract homes, whipping dust clouds
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through the silent streets of a hundred planned urban developments. As the
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sun sets on that dry, hot day, casting a blood-red light on the clattering,
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crumbling vinyl siding, I shall go for a walk. Though I have long since
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abandoned smoking, I will get a pack, and I will smoke them all, casting each
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half-finished cigarette into open windows. Or out into backyards full of
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overgrown brown weeds.
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Most will burn out, but a few will catch. The swirling night wind will
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turn a spark into a blaze, and a blaze into a conflagration, and a
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conflagration into an inferno. All that night, it will be as if the sun
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never set, for a ring fifty miles in circumference about the outside of the
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city will burst into flame. And that night, there will be no sound but the
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rushing of the wind as the firestorm draws in all the available oxygen from
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Cheatham, Robertson, Rutherford, and Sumner counties. Tied to stakes just
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beyond the fire's edge lest the gale force winds draw us in, we shall roast
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marshmallows and sing patriotic Southern songs.
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Yes, except for the wind, it will be silent. But for the mass exodus of
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rodents and small woodland animals from burning, derelict neighborhoods, all
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of nature shall hold its breath and wait the coming of morning. That
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beautiful blue morning when, coughing uncontrollably in the drifting smoke,
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we shall raise our hands to an empty heaven above. We shall stare into the
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cerulean sky, rapt and breathless, full of gratitude to the fire god.
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.-. _ _ .-.
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/ \ .-. ((___)) .-. / \
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/.ooM \ / \ .-. [ x x ] .-. / \ /.ooM \
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-/-------\-------/-----\-----/---\--\ /--/---\-----/-----\-------/-------\-
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/lucky 13\ / \ / `-(' ')-' \ / \ /lucky 13\
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\ / `-' (U) `-' \ /
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`-' the original e-zine `-' _
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Oooo eastside westside / ) __
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/)(\ ( \ WORLDWIDE / ( / \
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\__/ ) / Copyright (c) 1997 cDc communications and the author. \ ) \)(/
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(_/ Award-winning CULT OF THE DEAD COW is a trademark of oooO
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cDc communications, PO Box 53011, Lubbock, TX, 79453, USA. _
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oooO All rights reserved. Edited by Swamp Ratte'. __ ( \
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/ ) /)(\ / \ ) \
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\ ( \__/ Save yourself! Go outside! Do something! \)(/ ( /
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\_) "THE COW WALKS AMONGST US" Oooo
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