Man’s Limbs Have Minds of Their Own

by cathleen jane

11/29/11

On November 22nd, Phillip Alexander woke up to a body that did not quite belong to him anymore. It started with his left arm when his day began to the sound of the morning alarm. When he turned to cut it off, Phillip found himself unable to reach out, instead it sat by his side and his hand balled up in a fist. “I tried my hardest to just stick a finger out and it was just impossible,” explains Mr. Alexander, “I got out of bed and for about ten minutes it was stiff at my side and it spastically started reaching for anything nearby. I had to move my entire body out of reach of anything.”

Slowly throughout the day Phillip began to lose complete control of his own limbs. His right arm was the second to go and he finally decided to see a doctor. Not having the ability to drive he was forced to walk and it was at this time where his arms began to act up.

“It was pretty embarrassing,” recalls Phillip. “In a windmill motion, my arms moved constantly. Every now and then, stopping to make some extreme gesture.”

Passerby’s report in telling us of what they saw: “While walking my dog, this guy was walking in my direction and from a good distance away he held up his middle finger. As he passed right by me he held it right in my face. He wouldn’t even make eye contact. As he walked further away his arm was still extended in my direction, finger full fledged.” Another tells about how he would punch every sign he passed by, “I was wondering what made him mad. He wailed on at least five stop signs. Strange thing was he didn’t seem to like that he was doing it. Not many people who punch signs out of anger yell out, “Ow.”

And a female claims, “Oh I feel bad not knowing his conditions, I was just on my daily walk and he just reached out and tried to grab my chest. I gave him a good pop in the eye. And then he some how managed to grab my ass.”

Phillip confirms these stories along with a shiny black eye. By the time Mr. Alexander made it to the doctor’s office he was dragging himself with his right leg, for his left was no longer his. “They took me in the back and when the testing began on me trying to figure out what this is, finally my right leg too was of its own mind.”

Dr. Jordan, who’s seeing over Phillip, explains, “…his condition is extremely rare, this is not the first time any hospital has encountered this but at the same time it’s easy to lose focus on what needs to be done.” Recalling Phillip’s initial movements when the disease fully kicked in, “His left leg was trying to go right and his right leg was trying to go left. Rarely were they moving in normal sync while his arms gestured like a pissed off demon.” But Dr. Jordan also emphasizes that this is not any form of a demonic body take over but a serious physiological and psychological, nerve processing and reaction dysfunction. “It’s very important that we contain Mr. Alexander until we have complete control of his body. From any time now to as possible as years and year, the wait for recovery is is unknown.”

“My life is, for the time being, now on hold. I have yet to let it sink in,” wondering if it’s possible his head/mind is next, “and until then, and through then, I will just have to deal,” Phillip explains with a teary voice as he sits tied up to a reclined chair waiting for the hopeful moment.

Sixers

11/29/11

That’s pretty gross grandma, but okay.

I walk like it’s Christmas year round.

 

lo! a new era

[(editor's note) - Kasey was a great friend to all of us and had the most enthusiastic ideas when it came to life and the moment. 'The moment,' he always talked about the moment like it was a rip in time where you had your directions right in front of you, with several options of where to go with specific details of where it led and the prizes and consequences it may contain, but Kasey burned these moments like a ball of hash. Kasey was never in the moment, he was the moment.

Below is a passage written by Kasey in which we believe shows the direction he was heading in life. Something revolutionary, something powerful and non-neglectful. This is a piece of Kasey, the last piece of his life as if stamped for something more than what he was. Read on and burn...] See you soon Kase.

by Kasey Taylor

If I were to die tonight, I feel much of what I leave behind is not enough to make a difference in anyone’s life, play any significance for the future nor inspire any curious mind. I have read much of my own old works today an feel I’m leaving nothing but immature dribble. My serious writing days date back to as early as 2004; I agree, seven years of perfecting a talent still deserves the title of “hobby,” and I feel it shows in my earliest poetry. I will be the first to admit that my early writings are nothing of worth to anyone who wants to spark their minds with color and imagination. But I will also be the first to tell you that my mind if not regurgitated bullshit. I admire my heroes and I will steal from them if I must, but my style is my own; my combinations are my own; my mind is my own.

Along with a selected few recently written pieces, I start a new era in my writing. I don’t want to write anything other than something that will inspire, that colors and creates and destroys. So you ask how arrogant am I to say that everything I plan to write will be more than original and will stand out from the monotonous brain drag you have just slobbered onto us? How full of myself am I? Tell me, every time you pick up your pen and scribble down what you think deserves to be printed, do you not write it down with the same attitude as I do? lo! You must, or dare you never call yourself a writer until you feel you deserve to place tomorrow’s history in today’s ink.

Seclude yourself in this world all you want, but where the pen rules, you must stand up on both feet, state your name and call out to what muse you drink from in order to walk in this new land. This new land we all believe we deserve to walk. If you don’t believe, you don’t exist and we will neglect everything you think you stand for. We are a cruel, compassionate breed that only the insane find considerate. We are capable, curious creatures that deserve to be listened to, and we will make our stamp.

You have put effort into your pen all these years, but tonight we will let it go. Join me in this movement that will speak to generations beyond us. We will not cry in lonely despair, but embrace it. We will look into the eyes of good and evil and make our own decisions where there is no right or wrong, only our continuing steps in this explosive land.

Join me tonight in what I call existentia-romanticism. This is what we do. We have the nuts to name our own movement by stealing two others and combining. We take everything real and distort the hell out of it, we take everything creatively created and inject it into our everyday lives. It’s not an idea set in stone, only a starting place for us to move on from. We are our own tambourine men and women. You will be confused, and no more than myself. It’s a beautiful feeling isn’t? Stupidly; carelessly; honestly; corruptionly; surrealistically living this life. If you dare, live it with me and we will start something this world has been missing for three centuries.

Those who wish to join me I ask you to state your name and tell us what you wish to accomplish. If you have read this and truly understand what I am saying, you will know how to answer this call.

Contradiction is your new good friend. Embrace it.

Bigfoot Spotted With Little Feet!

by ed lynley

10/25/11

Recent reportings of a bigfoot having been seen in the Hamilton County area in Tennessee are creating a stir among the locals. Descripitions of the beast have all been very similar indicating it might be the same creature considering the distinct feature of a large hump on its back causing it to hunch over. Even with its seemingly handicapped nature it still towers in size. The heighth of its legs are supposedly reaching over six feet tall and the angle of the monster’s slouch allows it to stand at just around eight feet. If without the slouch, the reporters think it could easily stand erect at well over ten feet tall.

The bigfoot is also described to have long hanging, matted black hair. In fact, the length of the hair and complete placement over the entire body of “flesh[?]” seems to have irritated the face and vision as it appears it has torn the hair from its head just in the areas above and below his eyes and above his mouth; almost in the fashion of an ape, but before the stages of evolution allowed its kind to adapt by naturally losing the full, [long] facial hair. Almost a sort of canine-primate hybrid, or “homo-caninus” in what Dr. Standifer from Standifer University newly terms, or even possibly “homo-felinus.” With a sort of sticky black mane surrounding the head completely, its face is smeared with dark brown patches of what seem to be dried blood from the constantly pulled hair. The hair everywhere else on its body is untouched and hangs freely or mangled in dirty knots.

With the exception of the case of a mysterious animal that ripped Sandee Brines’ arms clean off at the shoulder and left for dead with a large hole in her stomach and her insides slung everywhere, there interestingly there hasn’t been any reported signs of aggressive behavior from the bigfoot. Most of the encounters have been described as casual and exciting but the beast would run away if it realizes it’s been spotted. “His arms were huge,” Little Patty Purle exclames after her run in with bigfoot during a hike on the Cumberland Trail on Signal Mountain, “and his hands. When he walked they dangled from his body and hovered just over a foot above the ground.” But what surprised these witnesses the most about this bigfoot is that it has little feet.

“It was the damndest thing,” Mr. Collins of East Ridge, the first reporting witness, explains, “it was no more than thirty yards into the woods behind my backyard. There’s a giant rock my kids always play on but when I went back there I found old sasquatch reclined against it. Lying on the ground with his legs stretched out and feet propped up. And get this, his feet were no larger than my hands.” Mr. Collins holds his hand up in examination. Considering the proportion of this animal, the size of its feet don’t quite fit the body structure it’s meant to hold up. Yet from the hump on its back to the tiny of its toes, dozens of reports describe the exact same features. As more witnesses tell their tale, scientists are looking to capture the creature in order to further understand what it is.

Since the first day sightings began rolling in, eighteen different bigfoot hunter groups have made their way into the Chattanooga area looking for what many have already found. Of the most recent in these reports big foot was last seen in the kid’s section of a Foot Locker at Northgate Mall.

A Powerful Sense of Something

by larry felun

The smell of a gun just shot is nothing short of beautiful. The sound of its firing, sweeter. And even when the sun blocks the most of your first few shots, it doesn’t take away from the power that literally expels at the touch of your fingertip. It’s just before fall and the trees are holding their color and the air isn’t too clean. It’s nice.

Today it’s the Beretta twelve-gauge. Semi-automatic. Next time it’ll be the HK forty-five. Maybe both.

Shooting something always tends give you a powerful sense of something. Something, raw and holy. Power from a gun; pleasure from your cock; invincibility from a needle; motherhood from your split, from your tits; accomplishment from a throw; alpha from your fist.

sickunderpressure

My desk, I haven’t given her a name yet. Or maybe I have and just forgot because the production came at a stupor of high thoughts; forgettable but in need of a reminder. Reminisce; Eileen. She sits underneath scattered piles of trash, notes, water bottles and beer bottles, air freshener, sticky notes, a large discharged round from a machine gun used off a ship in the operation of ‘Desert Storm,’ just behind it is a porcelain dolphin seemingly jumping over another dolphin but really just humping its head. Then there’s a three-legged clay pig, chapstick, pencils, pens, three old boutonnières from three seperate proms with the same girl, digital recorder, a dead lamp soon to be replaced with another or maybe just a candle. Double-sided taped to the wall in front is a copy of Dali’s Birth of a New World surrounded by stuck sticky notes acting as a sun for the revelatory scene. To the right is my window, Jack Rabbit Slim’s menu at the top left bridging Dali and a two page rip-out of Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace at dinner sitting underneath a small poster of RadhaKrishna embraced among an assortment of colours. To the left of Eileen and below the lover posters is the book shelf. Not quite large enough to hold every book you can see as after the obvious first placements any open space available will do: on top of other books, on top of the top shelf, hanging on the edge in front of other books and some just at the foot (mind the other segments of books already shelved on the floor, bed, tv stand etcetera etcetera etcetera) that drown out to my pond of empty water bottles that is enclosed by my chair, desk, books/bookshelf, two foot length of open wall and the closet door I let hang open against a small trash can against my chair. The pond is enclosed all right. Up that two foot length of wall are written notes about proper ways to send off submissions on paper taped underneath another copied Dali painting, Swans Reflecting Elephants. I’m typing to you through the lovely Ella who sits unharmed. I paid decent money for her, or at least my own earned money, or at least money. In my desk are old pictures of a long ago girlfriend, notebooks, folders, paperclips, a fist-sized mirror and a couple razors, a can of Altoids with a pipe inside (Thor’s Hammer) mainly used for marijuana. A couple of old anti-depressant and mood-stabilizer prescription bottles sit next to it well filled with (as of this writing) Orange Kush; heavily Indica, I prefer Sativa. Dealing with a new dealer, I asked his name. “Orange Kush,” he says. “Ah right, beautiful, but I mean your name,” I say. He gives his little boy, about one, something to eat, “Oh I’m Charlie.” We shake hands, “Nice to meet you, I’m Larry.”