The Nightmare of Louisville, Kentucky

First Expedition, Captain’s Log: “… apocalypse approaches,”

The teenage years of the 21st century have come to their close.

A drought took root and tore through the land

“Fear and Loathing” were lost in the subsequent desert sand.

Or the concrete dust from the rubble of fallen buildings I should say.

I never even knew we had a Hard-Rock cafe

Until it crashed.

Now we have “Pissed-off and Paranoid.”

Where we once had the Beat Generation, we now have the Beaten.

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But everyone was shiny

They had all their facial features trimmed with chrome.

They polished their outward personas so much

That nobody could see who they really were on their own

All you saw was a bright,

Unpleasant light

And sometimes a distorted reflection of yourself

Because you only saw yourself in comparison to them.

In them

Them - glowing and shining

And beneath the chrome was rust

And it ate and ate

(As Consumption himself had just been on the cover of TIME)

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Rust always eats the brain first. The brain is a favored appetizer among most species except for humans of course who never had much use for the damn thing. And in the spirit of trendy minimalism and since they cancelled Hoarders, we started getting rid of things we didn’t use. Couldn’t afford to give up the gut because it was a great dinner tray when we didn’t feel like carrying the laptop from the bedroom to the kitchen. And we couldn’t afford to give up the groin because of teenage nostalgia. But the brain didn’t have a lot of time invested so we let rust do us all a favor.

Bones were obsolete - they had been replaced with neon bulbs so that you could select the style of your skeleton, fragility has never looked better, let me tell you.

America was a high-class hotel and we trashed it like the drug IV-drip, guitar stars we were.

‘Not saying we didn’t do it with style.

‘Not saying we didn’t do it with the talent and charisma and glory of a rock and roll band.

But we trashed it nonetheless.

We kicked out the footlights of the auditorium.

And we set it all on fire to light our cigarettes so we could look cool for the camera.

I smell burning hair, bad blood, and twice fermented barley.

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Fourth Expedition, Captain’s Log: “...in the search for where it all went wrong”

Among the most incredible places in history, we still haven’t found a few of the more important ones:

1. The Fountain of Youth

2. Where Amelia Earhart Landed

3. The American Dream

4. And Where It All Went Wrong

Treasure hunters, humanitarians, historians, and Hunter Thompson himself have searched for these places with largely the same amount of success.

We spent years searching casinos and the “better” suburbs for some semblance of the American Dream. We checked the concerts expecting a cameo and we looked in the great places like Las Vegas and McDonald’s. In the 80s there was reported sighting. Somebody said they saw the American Dream shooting pool with some Soviets in Chi-town, but this was never verified and is widely believed to be a hoax.

Even I myself searched for a few years. I checked under every rock in the country and found mostly small, venomous desert wildlife and several senators. I have long held the suspicion that The Dream fled the country and is living out a humble life in Veracruz.

But I believe we wasted too much time. Obviously, if It cannot be seen, something must’ve happened so I have turned my efforts toward the more relevant “where it all went wrong”. I figure if I find that, there might be some clues as to the whereabouts of The Dream as well.

So far I’ve been to all the back alleys in each town and I’ve found five homeless people, bucketfuls of needles that I sell as collectible pieces of history for a dollar or two - cash, and I’ve been mugged 83 times. I checked all the dressing rooms at Madison Square Garden where I was told that things might’ve gone wrong but all I ended up with was several restraining orders for accidentally walking in on a nude Marilyn Manson. An anonymous tipster said things might’ve gone wrong in DC so I ran around there for a while and something was wrong everywhere so I took an Advil and left.

I checked the front yards of young black men where crosses had been burned and found that something had definitely gone wrong there, but not a damn thing could explain that tragedy so I left there too, disturbed.

I went to Wall Street where two, twin brothers named Rapacity gave me a tour and tried to sell me the whole street, but due to the consistent muggings I missed out on the opportunity.

I looked around the Garden of Eden (which is hidden in a cornfield in Illinois by the by) and they said they hadn’t seen the where it all went wrong and that I should check elsewhere “Quickly” as Gabriel did a line off the ass of a Seraph. Shit was still going wrong there so that couldn’t be the place because the name specified past tense.

Our entire expedition was kicked out of Philadelphia for insinuating that “where it all began,“ and “where it all went wrong” may have shared square footage. Next, my team and I will be searching zoos that hold Komodo dragons, hot dog stands that sell anything other than hot dogs, and department stores whose medium is actually a large.

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Ninth Expedition, Captain’s Log: “…we found answers we were not looking for”

The American Dream died during the war

which one, you ask?

I don’t know pick one ( and fast)

It lost its life on the front lines

in the olden times,

long ago

over and over again

Now we live on one massive, masochistic Nevada of a nation, nothing but desolation and pieces of Las Vegas scattered across an ugly, barren horizon.