Cully Ewing died from the family curse of alcoholism.

Top of the morning gents,

I thought I'd confide in you that I've not cried once since my little brother died. On the contrary, I've almost felt a lightening in my step. I'm saddened as a shit sandwich that I'll never again get to consult my very own personal Jesus on matters technical nor musical. I'm also saddened I'll never get to consult Cully on matters socially incorrect nor funny crimes robbing banks, apprentice electrical shit and stupid human tricks involving fires and accidental explosions. Little kids look really funny with shaved heads, cuts, burns and bruised testes. Laugh it up faggots, those two funny looking boys are me and Cully.

What's oddly comforting is that Cully passed away in a rather short period of time after our parents blew chunks in our shorts, whispered fart mist in our faces and leaked jellied bile on our dicks. In death, maybe Cully achieved creative freedom, full quid self-actualization and with his band mates' prayers, deity level accommodations. As heartbreaking this may be, Cully can never be erased from time and space and he'll no longer walk with me to kindergarten at Mentalwood Elementary with gravely injured underwear and red marks across our thorax.

I'll let you in on a secret. I joined the Boys Club basketball, baseball and football so I could escape the misery milking goat lactate and being in the same proximity and mailing address where my inbred family pissed and shit. The swim teams I enlisted in were crewed with like-minded misfits so much like me that Grandpa Veinman called us Hitler Yugen.

If you dildos ever get beyond your home state and mommy's hemispherical breast-feeding over-spray, you'd see why successful niggers run away from the reservation. This phenomenon is nearly commonplace for kids dreaming of a life hearing new dialects, types of humor and breeding with spouses that don't smell like yer sisters. It's a big world out there and I see my own siblings that fled the crusty vaginal folds of their mamma, found fortune and hopefully, a little fame. New eyes on new canvas yields new lessons, rare insights and novel artwork. New lessons indeed.

Again, I may be dim, but I recall every single lesson learned. You see, at my court-ordered Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I attended over 40 years ago, one of the slogans they oft spoke was to "unlock our futures we need to unload the burdens of our pasts." Well, since me grups choked and puked, I've been feeling quite nice in these last couple years. I've intentionally allowed my blurred levity to overlap Cully's passing and not dilute my new-found elated emotions arising from answered parental death-wishes of snuffing mental illness. Hell, I was this close to consulting Cully on how to electrocute them old crispy biddies and their narcissistic salty tasting marsupial pouches that stank of rotten geriatric pussy. An odor that made fleeing Washington imperative. Mental illness is invisible until we taste new soils and plant seeds in foreign monkey biscuit.

On Cully's Neuroshima web page, Scott Wade wished Cully, "Rest In Peace." Very kind words and that's what Cully's doing right now. Cully is no longer an injured toddler, beaten infant nor child weight-class punching bag. He repaid his injuries to those less fortunate by being of service to gimps and also took time to drive a kick-ass handi-champ over to Lem's Mortuary and Crack House for shit-talking, comedy and stoner convo. In summation of his childhood injuries and generous acts of redemptive kindness, Cully's no longer suffering scar tissue stretched painfully tight over his partially realized unlimited potential nor crippling shame for family affiliation. Now he's free of his retarded incestry, cheesing, grinning ear to ear and smiling like a motherfucker. Years ago, I recited Cully a quote stating, "We tend not to forgive those we hurt the most." Keep reading, I'll explain myself a bit better.

In my old age, I've learned I have a complete lack of imagination and zero creativity, but I pay keen attention and successfully kype wit over coffee and bong hits. I also steal material over tea and tokes with musically superior sexual deviants, poly-rhythmical gimpoids and mono-tonal palsy maggots. As a finishing touch to this foul brew of clever wit, I appropriated reams of material from drunken cops, wasted firemen and my uniformed native coworkers enjoying cigarettes and coffee inside a thousand village jails, rural dispatch centers and tribal police department squad rooms north of the Arctic Circle.

To further fertilize my typed discharge, I've recorded entire lectures, stories and shit-ass jokes from a million best pals and hombres just like you guys. If you don't like the content of these shit-on-canvas landscapes I've painted upon this white space we inhabit, you shouldn't have uttered such clever, foul, witty, putrid beauty in my presence. You see, DNA isn't a living entity, it's dead as sheet music. Even human cells cannot live without a device to communicate similar to telegraph. Alas, us human mongoloids cannot communicate between each other without words and music. Everything I write is an expression very similar to music I mimic from highly modified monkeys and the texts I stole from history books, slavery auctions, comic insults during cocaine weigh-ups and dialogue perfectly recalled with all you funny fuckers.

All these documented bullshit seshes I'm detailing here were wonderfully polluted by blessed scab-ass maggots, lucid mental midgets, partially functioning birth defects, placental bandaged drinking buddies and still-breathing fetal miscarriages far more talented and advanced than yer author on drugs. I paint with my foul mouth, plagiarizing from my shit-pile of shrink books, anthropological and historical literature and pop-twat drug-culture. These rewritten conversations can best be best described as siestas fumar retrieval in fine 400-year Ewing tradition, albeit English as high tea and bad teeth.

With this cast of pustulating ass-fuckers on this stage I've created, I went through my notes and older rough outlines of composts unpublished and adding intellectually pseudo-data from a slew of emails I received from old cohorts in crime after Cully's death, I successfully cobbled together and authored a string of brain-dead schemes that me and Cully played a role in, peripherally or directly.

You guys all know each and every one of the characters in this stupidly erudite episodic playwright. Including sketches of little boys as apprentice bank robbers, electricians and arsonists, concluding with rather touching poignant messages we can whisper to Cully as we push our little brother's Kayak-puk (Inuit death canoe) away and across River Styx. Gentlemen, take your seats and grab some tissue, Cully's funereal coda is starting and his tragic opera house lights are lit.

During the 80's Renee worked at the Sea-First Bank on Greenwood in North Seattle. Besides telling common criminals' plethora how to alter, mutilate, forge and kite checks and cash them at Lem's Mortuary and Crack House. She also told me and Cully, Marto and Dennis when the night deposit at her bank was emptied and audited.

Renee also proved instrumental when we needed to ditch and clean piles of shitty cocaine money. Keeping lots of money on-site would've given the cops something to seize and invited robberies from miscreant thieves. For example, the 3 dead black hombres that will exist forever as ash residue, way down in my grandpa's outhouse poop pit, north of Marysville, near 7-Lakes.

Okay, back to Sea-First Bank and their night deposit drop chute. 7-Elevens, gas stations and convenience stores all used the night deposit because they closed long after banking hours. They simply drove up, opened the DIEBOLD brand metal door and dropped their locked canvas bank pouches down the chute, slammed the metal door and drove off.

Based on Renee's detailed designs, Cully schemed that with silver duct tape and a silver Hefty Steel Sack Trash Bag, we could tape a garbage bag part-way down the chute and after a bunch of merchants dropped their nightly tills of cash, credit card receipts and checks down the hatch, we'd reach in and simply take out the trash-so to speak. After a few pimply night managers delivered their loot, we'd un-stick the tape and pull the garbage bag up and snatch all the deposited bank pouches. Like I said. Simple.

Which is exactly what we did. Me and Cully, Marto and Dennis packed into Cully's green 66 Ford van, parked directly in front of the night deposit slot, real close and tight. We taped a silver Hefty Steel Sack down inside the chute with duct tape, then pulled away and surveyed our marks from the darkest part of the parking lot. We waited and watched as numerous late-night customers pulled up, got out and tossed their locked bank pouches inside (without a glance or second thought) and drove away. We knew pay-dirt arrived whenever we heard that DIEBOLD metal door clang shut. Like Pavlov's drooling dogs, we sprouted boners (because we were Edmonds dog fuckers) and sported shitty grins in anticipation of kyped loot in our goat-skinning mitts.

Nowadays we'd be busted, arrested and enjoying incarceration like a bag of mashed up assholes, cuz every bank has video cameras up the fucking ass, but not back then. From our covert observation point, we waited and watched 3 or 4 people (still in dorky Burger King and McDonald's uniforms) drive up and drop off their bank bags. Then we pulled Cully's van directly in front to block any possible view, pulled the trash bag back up and peeled the tape off, jumped back in the van and booked.

Me and Cully, Marto and Dennis split quite a bit of cash between us. We pitched the credit slips and stupid checks (and the bank bag) in the random rows of residential trash cans on our escape route, then divided up the loot 5 ways. We had to kick an equal share to Renee, cuz it was her idea and shit. Our best take was maybe $32,000 in cash, which equaled $6400 each. Renee paid all her bills, rents forward and utilities, I repaid my credits and fronts from Ray English and Bruce Loughridge, debts for auto repair and gasoline bills at R&R Automotive, then purchased a shit load of bulk product to forward stock my wares. For you financially illiterate feline butt greasers and pug sniffers, $32K four decades ago is worth nearly 8 times that much now. Look at the prices of houses, cars and gasoline and figure it out.

Marto, Cully and Dennis had bills to pay, so I'm pretty sure their shares went to STD medications, traffic citations, court costs, bail bonds, drug debts, back rents, utilities or buy new beaters. Cully was in the process of building his recording studio with Paul Kay in a 3-car garage he rented right behind Greenwood, so his monthly nut was double normal. Marto has lived at his parent's house his whole life, so he bought an enduro motorcycle. And beer. Musical geniuses will tell ye, after mommy's titties dry up, life is simple sucking dad's nipple.

This scheme only worked 3 times. We waited weeks between set-ups and tear-downs at Renee's bank while she'd keep us abreast as to warnings announced to the bank employees at the morning bank meetings over coffee before opening at 10:00 am. Nothing was said until end-of-month statements showed zero deposits on the precise dates we pulled our stupid shit.

Renee was our inside man and told us that all the store clerks that made the night deposits were fired because on paper, it looked like none of them drove to the bank with 7-Eleven, AM/PM MIni-Mart and gook restaurant bank bags of cash and junk paper. To confuse the issue, dirty the waters and point culpability toward bogus phantoms inane, Renee frequently voiced to her pal bank tellers at their morning meetings that she knew of numerous store clerks that pocketed the dough, made up tales of getting robbed and thought nobody'd figure their shit out. Rhyming these claims, typically banks CYA, meaning covering their asses and also blamed the dimpy store clerks for kyping the dineros and like simpletons, thinking they'd never get caught.

On our fourth mish, we cruised the surrounding neighborhood and looked for any suspicious vehicles. That's moron-speak for cop cars. Which we quickly discovered. The bank didn't reveal to their employees that they'd notified the bacon bits and piglets with suspicions somebody might be stealing monies directly from the night deposit slot, late at night, after closing times for convenience stores and gas stations. Since Renee never overheard management scheming these strategies, she was unable to give us a heads-up. We almost drove right into an ambush set up by really puny swine brains rippling with piggy blubber steaming their windshields drippy and wetting their cop-panties with reeking overly moist pork farts.

We stealthily motored around the bank, not thinking that an old, unmarked green utility van bearing Edmonds School District 15 stickers on the doors would look suspicious, and quickly picked up a tail. Out of the shadows a generic muni-vehicle darted behind us without it's headlights on and followed us. Do you smell burnt toast? Wisely, Marto yelled at Cully to drive like a white man, none of that fucking DWO bullshit (driving while oriental).

I know, our language is racist, sexist, ageist and intolerant to LGTB-Q+ nigger feces fag shit, but similar to your grandparents, all of us employees at Lem's Mortuary and Crack House were victims of public schools, public assistance, public toilets and deducing from the awful odors in the outhouses we buried our tar-baby kin under, we lacked public sanitation. Us Edmonds hillbilly goat milkers and dog fuckers were so poor, at school we couldn't afford to pay attention. Poverty, mental illness and alcoholism run in families and is a generational curse. Looking at me and Cully, it's funny shit to laugh at.

Marto was the smartest of us inbreeds and shoved the box of silver Hefty Steel Sacks under his coat, then put the duct tape in Cully's tool box he used for work at the gimp shacks and gigs setting up PA gear and the amp/speaker crap at all the bars he jammed. Larson and I would tape all them damn wires and cables down so when Cully's band mates got wasted drunk, they'd avoid tripping over them. I pulled out Cully's beater, out of tune, wooden guitar and started strumming bogus awful sounding chords and picking nonsensical nervous notes. I told Cully and Dennis, seated up front, that we're looking for a party, and it was supposed to be at an address I gave them for Cully's coworker Mark, a good dude and better customer I made deliveries to.

Then the cops lit us up. It's called a felony take-down and we had unmarked cop cars in front of us and behind us. Every police vehicle light blinded us and with nowhere to go, we just stopped in the middle of the road. The cops approached on four sides, armed with loaded flashlights, peeked in all the van's windows, asked Cully for license and registration for his green van, while I strummed shitty riffs on the guitar. The cops asked where we were headed and Cully recited perfectly the address I gave him for our buddy and coworker Mark nearby and stated we were heading to a party there.

Marto and me sat on the floor in the back, while Cully and Dennis chatted amiably with the uniformed dill-rods. They asked if we'd been drinking. We all loudly stated no, but sure as shit were gonna. I kept strumming that dumb stage prop guitar, Marto kept his arms folded, pushing in the box of silver Hefty Steel Sack trash bags so he didn't look obese like a scrawny African Santa Claus with a puffy jacket and distended beer belly. To quote our red-headed stage manager, Troy at the Hash House, "Life isn't a dress rehearsal Brian. All the world's a stage and we act the life-part we're scripted!" Meaning, be cool mongoloids and don't fuck up cuz we were cast in life as poor mud-farmers and illiterate crooks.

Obviously missing the chance to catch real-life bank robbers, the cops seemed highly disappointed and weren't really happy to pull over a van filled with numb-nut dim-bulb partiers and ugly bearded revelers, but relented and told us to be careful, choose a designated driver and they left. To this day, I don't know why they didn't first wait to see if we were dumb enough to install the garbage bag and duct tape in the night deposit chute, wait for magic money to drop, then bust us when we pulled the trash bag and peeled the duct tape. Luckily, Cully and Dennis were upfront and noticed the unmarked muni-vehicles parked in the dark recesses with clearly visible fat cop silhouetted piggy heads stationed all around the bank. One swine-shite was even parked in our regular hidey-hole. With damning evidence of a shit-rich pig-trough staring us in the face, it kind of gave us a fucking clue: Barney Fife and the pork-fried oinkers abound.

Here's how dumb we were. Bank robberies are investigated and prosecuted by the FBI. Our stunts qualified as bank robberies, not clever bag snatchers nicking night deposits from local merchants that closed late at night, long after bank hours. You see, once the money was stuffed in those zipped and locked canvas Sea-First Bank bags, dropped down the chute and into our catch-all trash bags, the monies became bank property. I shudder at the thought of the possibly disastrous outcomes we planted our stupid hillbilly asses directly in front of.

No judge or jury would've believed we were silly mongoloid nincompoops out on a lark kyping shit. Okay, maybe we were silly mongoloid nincompoops, but we'd still be doing long stretches behind bars, enjoying lousy food and lousy sex. We kidded Marto that he'd be the only member of our merry pranksters and thieves that would've enjoyed the lousy sex and shitty food in prison. His retort was, "Laugh it up faggots." "You guys are real funny monkey nuts." "If I was a naked 4-year-old boy, I'd be totally terrified to be in this van with you fuckers right now." "Let's get outa here. One of you fuckers got gas and it smells like you really need to go to the hospital!" Looking back, it's likely I spent more time in jail than you lot. I was paid to drag wasted fighting and kicking brown-tards outa cop cars, mop puke and smell prison cells after passionate prison sex. Except I received a paycheck and a pension. My life is funny as a crutch. I mean a crotch.

Another crime of opportunity and complicated crime scene was when I delivered some blow to Cully boss, Steve at Care (less) Medical. I met him through Cully and Pim. Being Cully's boss and a decent party dude pal of Pim's was cred sufficient for me to take him on as a customer and sell him blow. We all partied there and it was a common occurrence for me to make deliveries there. He lived near Cully's house 3509, down by the locks on the Montlake Cut.

I knocked on the door and heard nothing. I knocked again and still no answer. This was pissing me off, cuz he said to motor over with a nice half-ounce and I was low on gas. So I went round back, peeked in all the windows, banged on the back door and yelled. Still nothing. Since I was making a delivery and everybody gets happy when the blow arrives, I tried the back door and it opened. I walked in and yelled "Steve! It's me Karl!" "Where the heck are ye?" Nothing.

Well not quite nothing. There was a notably loud hum in the house and the whole place smelled like Thanksgiving Dinner. Steve's house was a puny little rental, so I walked from room to room and yelled his name. The only room I was afraid to open was the bathroom and that weird humming noise was loudest in there.

I went back to the living room, called Cully and asked him if Steve was over there. Cully said no and asked what I was doing, calling him from Steve's house. I told him that I was instructed to fetch a big package of blow and deliver it to his house, 6 blocks over from Cully's. I told Cully that I had a half-ounce on me and that I needed to get paid cuz I was low on gas and the cocaine was on credit from Marto's buddy, Ray English. Cully said hold on, hang tight, he'd book over.

I waited a few minutes and when Cully arrived, I opened the front door and let him in. We both did a walk-thru and found no Steve. Cully asked if I looked in the bathroom, I said no and asked if he could hear the loud humming sound. Cully said yup and that it was an electrical hum.

Cully opened the bathroom door and we both saw Steve sitting naked in the bathtub. An electrical cord was plugged into the wall and going into his tub. Cully told me not to move and step back out. Cully went to the kitchen, opened the electrical service panel and bitter acrid smoke wafted outwards as he pulled the door open. The electrical humming was loudest right at that moment.

Cully looked at each of the old glass fuses and they were all popped. Which is funny cuz there shouldn't be any power going to the house since the old thread-in glass fuses showed broken gaps in the tiny windows facing us. So Cully reached up and threw the main breaker switch at the top, separating all current from the power pole to the house.

The whole house went dark and the humming stopped completely. We went back to the bathroom and Steve was still sitting naked in the tub, not moving after shutting off the power, like maybe he was gonna wake up refreshed and cleanly scrubbed. Steve had taken a bath and set his clock radio on the edge of the tub. Then it fell in his bath water. This was as good a guess as any. Few people commit suicide by floating live hot-wired electrical appliances in their bathtub like rubber duckies.

Besides, normally, the circuit breakers should've popped and Steve wouldn't have felt a thing. But stupid Steve put pennies in each of the old-stool glass breakers, then screwed in the popped old-fashioned glass thread-in fuses. All of 'em had pennies in them allowing unlimited current to flow to all his electronics and stereos. Men of our vintage use lots of plug-in multipliers for our stereos, amps, gadgets, VCR's and televisions with zero regard for the limited load ratings old Seattle houses were wired for, with cheesy cloth-wrapped brittle aluminum wires, built a half-century before us punks bought a ton of electrical shit.

After his clock radio fell in the tub, the full house current electrocuted him. That's a lot of 120-volt alternating current with unlimited amperage directly from the power pole, through Steve, down the metal bathtub and exiting the house through his soapy bath water and metal drain pipes. A perfect circuit with only one meat moron in the middle to convert some of the electrical blast into resistance heat and create that delicious Thanksgiving Holiday Season ambiance.

After all the juice was shut off, I went into the bathroom, still afraid of his crispy corpse and that dreadful metal bath tub, grabbed his trousers hanging on the bathroom door and took the roll of money, which was his entire paycheck, with only part destined towards Ray English, my gas tank, beer in the fridge and weed for me and Cully. Since Steve was no longer in the mood to party and snarf down piles of blow, we kept it--and all the money.

Cully also recommended I snag his box of pipes, papers and weed offa the table in the living room, plus his cool bongs. Steve wasn't gonna be needing them any more and all that contraband would only get seized by the cops, paramedics and firemen that we needed to phone pronto. Reflecting his innate sensitivity, I think Cully had great reverence for his workmate, pal and bar-hopping wing man and the stash of bongs and shit would've raised suspicion and prejudiced the fucking cops and paramedics to wrongly assume sinister yet non-existent factors in Steve's accidental death. Poor guy simply died alone enjoying his hot bath jamming to KISW FM 100 Seattle Best Rock. When I arrived, I was listening to the same show, "Get the Led out" in my car and Steve's killer radio was dialed to the same station. Steve's demise brought a much different meaning to the homophilic guffaw, "dick smoking." Good stuff broski.

Cully went back to the electrical service panel, turned the power back on, then looked at me and said he was gonna call Steve's ex-wife and tell her what transpired, then hook up with me back at my mortuary and crack house in Terrace. I knew that was my cue to make like an aborted baby and with a coat hanger necktie, head out, so I fled the scene of an accidental shit-kicking weeny roast, tossed all the resin smelling pipes and shit in my trunk and motored away in my vintage Dodge Dart that was the sedan coupe version of Baird's African Queen. After Cully's call, Steve's ex-wife immediately phoned the cops, who showed up and were greeted at the front porch by Cully.

Cully explained that Steve was his boss, pal and they partied a lot together. He also explained that he was supposed to meet Steve and go bar-hopping that evening. Of course, omitting the part about shutting off the power, kyping Steve's roll of cash, turning the power back on and sending me out the door, down the road, with my arms loaded full of Steve's bongs and shit, queasy, green and scared shit-less.

The emergency rescue team contacted the Fire Chief who arrived to shut down the electricity with the throw-switch outside the house, checked Steve's vitals, pronounced him deceased, then the cops took lots of photos. The emergency responders lifted Steve outa the tub to fit him in a body bag, refrigerate his ass at the hospital morgue and likely bury him in a pauper's grave. Steve, like Cully and all of us, had nobody to pick up the cooked leftovers of his body, soon left abandoned in the fridge. Think about it. Who's gonna come and claim yer body after you eat a gun, leap through your front windshield, jump rope off a bucket or vapor lock on top of a much younger woman?

Cully ID'd the body, declaring Steve was his boss, buddy and close neighbor. Cully went so far as to provide the cops with contact info for his ex-wife and kids plus another dude-pal of theirs. Mark was their third wheel on their bar-hopping missions. He was also employed at Care Medical, a pal of Pim's, owned a totally rad Gran Torino, and was humbled, saddened and honored to drive over and second Cully's body ID. I doubt his ex wanted to see Steve's crispy face, skeletal roast torso and burnt rump roast. I also don't think any human would want to see his ass, penis and ball sack stuck to the bath tub. Maybe we should invent a non-stick bath tub just for these special occasions. This gives me ideas for the upcoming Senior Center Christmas parties we'll all be attending real soon.

The cops did a butt-load of interviews with his ex-wife, coworkers, neighbors and all of 'em stated they saw Cully's green van pull up, as he frequently did, then they stated the cops and ambulances showed up. None of 'em said a peep about my beater 66 Dodge Dart parked 3 houses down, nor the shaggy blond dip-shit that entered through the back door, then left by the same route with a crap load of bongs and pipes, plus a half-ounce of blow and a fat roll of hundred dollar bills I fetched out of the deceased party dude's pocket. Which sadly implies I'm not a memorable person. My name is Nobody, I was never there.

Me and Cully met up later that evening at Lem's fer drugs, beer and chat about our shitty day. Callahan, Bill Pace, Dennis, Marto and Spanky, plus Mark and Pim showed up to catch up on Steve's demise. We shunned the thought of his horrid departure, amplifying our shivering from the thought of electrocution in an electric bath tub, butt naked in Dawn brand bubble bath and dish soap, psyched for Karl to show with near-lethal grade blow.

Cully and Callahan theorized that Steve's last thought was he was gonna get his smoke on, his beek packed and snotter powdered, then with one of his legs shorter than the other, both of his feet too long, go out drinking with Cully and do his best Frank Zappa Dancing Fool. Cully totally dug Zappa's albums and concerts cuz "he was the antithesis of bubble gum, trainer bra, tampon music." Meaning Cully abhorred chick flicks and bitch tunes and preferred blunt crude language like this.

When Ray English showed up, I paid him his money, kept my profit fer beer and buds, then with the company present, snorted down, smoked green bud cocoa puffs through my Industrial Bong and even dumped a scoop of cocaine in a bottle of bourbon and took rounds of shots together. We consumed all the blow throughout the night into the next morning, yet never shook the grim pall that hovered over us like a dark cloud. Steve was a decent dude and his barbecue in the bathroom kind of freaked us out. Ray stayed with us to party, even pouring out volumes of his own blow in a failed effort to improve the mood. Nonesuch.

Today, nearing the age of 62, I think all the drugs, beer, tokes and bourbon/cocaine shots were quite possibly more deadly than sitting in a tub, hot-wired for over an hour, to 120-volt house current. Funny notion, but I never considered our partying and Cully's loud music to be damaging to our hearing nor longevity. On my last trip to visit Cully was the date Sara had with Dr. West for facial reconstruction surgery. On that trip Cully gave some solo bass werks on cassette tape for me to listen to. I played them on the rental car radio and shared them with Nancy and Baird up at Sedro Woolley, plus made copies for my dude Daniel Ryder at KOTZ radio. I'm looking at them right now and feel rotten. I feel guilty because I've practiced them a thousand times and can now duplicate them playing each piece note-for-note on my own electric bass and Peavy Micro Bass amp. As stated heretofore, I steal everything, never creating anything. You're reading previously occurred and recited shit right now.

On the topic of occupational drug use, the best cigarette I smoked was during the 90's somewhere in rural Arctic Alaska when me and my native cop-mates bagged up a suicide by shotgun to the mouth X2. Me, Rick Mashburn, Dickie Moto and Marvin Ramoth were at the Village Public Safety Office getting ready for end of shift paper filing and shit, when we heard a loud boom. We jumped up and booked out the door to find a native girl (Hannah Washington) running directly towards us, crying her eyes out, sobbing that her boyfriend was way fucked-up and talking suicide. We took Hannah back inside the VPSO Office and asked her for details like his name, age, type of gun and shit. Within a few minutes of rapid-fire Q&A, we all booked out the door and headed to the crying Mrs. Washington's little native house.

On the run to Mr. Gun Eater's (Larry Brown) house, we heard a second boom. We all froze, looked at each other, then pounded on the door, standing on both sides in case fuck-head thought it amusing to shoot at the front door. It wasn't latched or locked or nothing, it just swung open revealing a sick-ass disaster. The whole shack stunk of bitter gun-smoke, rotten meat and poop.

Dumb motherfucker was wasted drunk, shot his cheek, teeth and tongue out one side of his face, regained his wits (or consciousness), cycled the shot gun action again and on his second effort, blasted his shit completely off it's hinges. My Eskimos work-mates in uniform explained what shooting the shit meant and what a shit-heal implied. After we took photos of his inverted cranium and random heavage artwork, I stepped out, borrowed a cigarette and really enjoyed a rather delicious smoke. I was feeling icky right at that moment but the pleasant nicotine rush replaced my repulse and tobacco breath tasted better than the inside of that fucker's squat-shack.

If I was playing the role of God, I'd just burn that poop-coated shack to the ground. When we incinerate drunken shitters like Larry Brown, the bratty drunk native shotgun blast inhaler and 12 gauge barrel smoker, the teeth remaining in his gob do the popcorn Mexican Jumping Bean Dance and leap out their mouths prior to turning to dust and ashes like the Nigerian-American inhabitants of my grandpa's outhouse up at 7-Lakes.

There's a bi-modal suicide curve in Alaska. We have a peak in suicides for young native men and an equally high peak for gun-eating rope-swinging elderly white males. Just like you and me. The theory is unending depression living so far north and so remote, called latitude sickness, allows suicide to provide a welcome relief. Why does every young brown stiff or old white corpse shit itself so I gotta get all nasty as we stuff them in a plastic sleeping bag, load their shit onto a snow machine sled and motor onward to their final resting place?

On numerous suicide call-outs involving hangings, being the tallest cop, I did the lifting of the corpse while my cop-mates climbed up above and cut the rope or extension cord. Suicide corpses all shit their pants, which means they shit my uniform too. Yummy. Sometimes after shift at the police department, I'd arrive at home, run to the bathroom, toss everything I was wearing into the laundry, then shower before Sara and Bun gotta whiff of my shit-painted clothes and anal-discharge blast-zone cologne.

Ain't no bad-asses left in this world. Sobriety increases our emotional resilience, but makes us considerate and kind. Kinda like an intellectually tender pussy. I shudder at the reams of crass material I've spoken, joked and composed without a shred of sensitivity about my topics nor care towards my readers. I may owe the entire universe an apology on the final day I tip over my wheelchair, crawl downstairs to the morgue and climb into the crematory furnace.

Plethora deluges of thoughts have surfaced since Cully died. In his direct analysis of our behaviors, he'd query me, "Shit Karl, ye ever think that our industrial drug consumption might actually be camouflaged suicide?" My response was to quote one of the drunks I sat next to at my Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He said, "We all signed a suicide pact a long time ago. Drinking and drugging is just the slow boat to the bone yard." In later years, with Cully in mind, I added the suffix that after a lifetime of alcoholism, even liquor no longer worked.

Cully never liked hearing me repeat shit from the roached old worn-outdrunks at my AA meetings, but that quote mirrored our thinking at that moment in time. Funny how these poignant moments and notions spoken from our brother Cully ring loudly decades later. We used to revel in our reckless skateboarding at breakneck speeds, racing our junker go-karts at terminal velocities without sufficient brakes or risk great falls from rope swings with Gordo, Marto, Callahan, Kerry Naff and Franky. Being retarded hillbillies too poor to shave, we were also too poor to afford fast cars but content to drive utilitarian auctioned vans and cars from the School District or City sales further illustrating our pragmatism and poor upbringing. My code words for poverty-stricken wiggers and cracker motherfuckers.

Cully's first van was the old green 1966 Ford Econoline van he bought for $405.00 from the School District auction. He added the $5.00 premium to beat out the inevitable competing bids at $400 even. The old red 1966 Dodge Dart I bought from the City of Mountlake Terrace auction using the same strategy and identical price. Just to piss Cully off, Marto would scribble in the ample dust and dirt on Cully's green van, "Green River Express." Hey, at least he didn't write "yer daughter is in here."

The old white 1972 AMC Ambassador Brian (micro-dot) bought from Arneson's mechanic coworker at Union 76 for $250.00. Higman was down from Kotzebue for dentist appointments removing his painfully inflamed wisdom teeth. Instead of renting a car for weeks costing a couple grand, he just went out and bought a used mature grandpa car.

Brian had flown down from Alaska and camped out at the Mortuary for a couple weeks doing cocaine and alcohol teeth removal recovery, then he and I drove over to his cousins for a week to party. I can't remember the cousin's name but they lived a few miles down the highway from Vern's Kingston house on the Olympic Peninsula. They ran a damn fine grow-op and freely poured the drinks and bong rips. Higman left me the AMC in exchange for lodging and anesthetic quantities of cocaine to pack in his empty molar sockets and also pack his nostrils and sinuses. Not all our activities at Lem's Crack House were suicidal, some were healthy and medicinal.

Since Cully died, I received emails from old friends from way back. One was from Mike Perlatti. He was reminiscing about how he and Cully and I were playing with matches in an old shack and how we nearly died in an unexpected explosion. We were flicking lit paper matches in the dark like shooting airborne flares, struck right off the strikers. Mike or me sent a cool sulfur missile towards our target bucket, but going long, the match bounced onto the lower shelf in our hideout shack and safe haven. We'll likely never discern what that stray match hit, but the explosion nearly killed us.

The entire shelf and tool bench barked loud like a huge dog, then hurled rusty tools and broken jars filled with screws and nuts at us. We had glass, metal shit and wood chips in our hair, shirts and faces. Not getting blinded was probably due to divine intervention. We all had cuts on our faces and heads, but we likely blinked for too long preventing the rapidly accelerating aggregate material from slicing and dicing our retinas and lenses.

Me, Mike Perlatti and Cully were only 5 or 6 years old. Put that into perspective now that our old ages are late 50's to early 60's, then replay this ordeal, watching small boys nearly dying in a mushroom cloud of tools, jars and God knows what. The shop we played in was consumed with flames so we ran outside, dusted ourselves off, then ran and hid while the structure burned level to the ground leaving only tools and metal boxes, smoldering and hotter'n shit.

When we got home, me and Cully were beaten like animals. We tried to cry out our excuses that it was a tragic accident, but our booze smelling Paps, dangling a cigarette in his mouth and mentally ill neurotic bitch-mom beat us head to toe with a paddle dad made from a wooden board, even catching us on the legs, face, pubes and hands. Adding insult to injury, they shaved our heads like Jewish Holocaust Prisoners. The logic my folks exercised was when they saw the firetrucks and we arrived covered in cuts, soot, burns and debris in our hair, they simply assumed us retarded and beat us like simpleton kids. Looking at ourselves and our family, their assessment was accurate.

But as they say, "Payback is a bitch." I started detailing me grups their vicious child-rearing techniques and sent them posted funny stories online about growing up in a mud-farmer goat-fucker alcoholic family. My dippy mother scoffed, cried and denied my silly claims of drunken laminated familial mental illness, but me paps got angry and argumentative. I was relentless. I mailed funny histories and tales of us pukes growing up at the Home For Special Needs Ewing Children and the response was perfect. Lorraine stroked out and was put in a rest home, then croaked. We're talking long-distance matricide without my lifting a finger. My only thought was, "I think I'll have a Diet Coke bitch!"

Afterwards, dumb ol' Fred got drunk with a vengeance, angered by silly letters, written in 1865 era hillbilly language from his oldest moron-child, chiding my incestry's chronic cruelty, slavery and ignorance. He shit, pissed and vapor locked like Callahan's fucked-up dad, and died. Within days, I got a nice letter from the new tenants at the Snohomish Manure Farm and covert emails from Sara and Callahan that Freddy was blue-toothed, occupying a chiller and soon to be burnt toast. I high-fived myself and danced around my village on the frozen Arctic Ocean like a kid singing "Peanut Butter Jelly Time!"

Don't worry, Eskimos automatically assumed me dim and called me Special K. Who'd a thunk this was gonna be easier than shooting them dumb ol' crispy grups with a stolen gun from Pim. A more lethal weapon is simply the truth, delivered to the face like a fly-swatter. I'm a Ewing-tard from Edmonds and due to chemical pruning, the still-functioning parts of my brain surrounded by amyloid plaquewerk real good. I need another knock on the head.

My soul was beaten outa me years ago. I used to laugh at our million 6 beatings in effort to put culpative remorse upon our vicious alcoholic and cruel mentally ill parents, but today, I just shake my broken head and feel justified in pushing me grups into a fire pit and my extra-judicial punishments I unleashed upon wife beaters and child abusers identical to my parents all over rural Alaska, on the job. I'm thinking you see a healthy outlet in my choice of occupations. The career finds the man, not the other way round.

Speaking of dodgy careers, after UCP (United Cerebral Palsy) Cully worked for Smth-Wright Estates. It was a facility for horribly deformed citizens, located on Bowdoin Street, just off 5-corners down the road from Chase Lake Elementary. It was also en route whenever me and Stuart walked home from Edmonds High School to his home off the Main Street Hill entrance to Emerald HIlls. In the gimp game of wheeled thrones, my dead brother and I rocked. Cully wheeled them, repaired their equipment, whereas I arrested fucked up brown mental chimplets, carried and dragged them to jail.

Similar to my career carrying ice-midgets to jail, Cully was a real pro at custodial duties working for handicapped facilities. Remember he first worked for UCP (United Cerebral Palsy) in Seattle as janitor, equipment maintenance and hauling piss-reek gimps around, then he took work at Smith-Wright Estates in Edmonds. A year of so later, he transferred to Care (less) Medical Supplies after befriending Steve (the electric lunch bath hombre) who serviced the medical equipment at Smith-Wright Estates. Him and Cully became good buddies and also explains how I met him and soon became his cocaine delivery boy. Steve hired Cully away from Smith-Wrong Escapes and Cully proved highly competent servicing hospital equipment all over the greater Puget Sound area working at Care Medical. Now you see the links of handshakes and Cully's resume that spanned the decade from '82 to '92.

Another cool friendship we gained during this decade was one of the clients (residents) at Smith-Wright Estates on 5-corners in Edmonds. His name was Mike and was wheelchair-bound like us, but witty and highly intelligent. Not a drooler nor vegie tray occupant in the cafeteria fer non-sentient leaking meat blobs. He was also not a plugged-in diaper diver with tubes up his fucking ass and shit. Mike was a solid good dude. He also loved Cully and me, and wanted to take his afternoon day-breaks with us at Lem's Mortuary and Crack House.

Cully drove him over after lunch in the company van and dropped by for a visit, smoke some bong rips and drink my expensive dark-roast coffee. If Cully was overly hungover or beat-ass fatigued, he'd sweeten his coffee with spoons of suspicious powders I had on sale. Mike would just hang out and visit me, Marto, Franky, Mark Arnie-girl (Arneson) and Rob (rubbish) while we'd drink our coffee or beer, smoke bong rips and play cards, watch porno or just sit around and bullshit over space music.

Marto cracked us up by playing old vintage porno cum-shots backwards, creating the appearance that John Holmes was sucking up globs of pecker snot offa faces and rectums with a shop-vac. We all laughed our asses off. Especially Mike the Gimper Dude. Marto is a natural comedian. Anybody attending our daily sessions would find us amusing, practicing our shitty humor, telling funny stories while watching old-stool icky porn, listening to trippy music or Cully's canned recordings.

Marto would high-five or fist-bump Mike and always addressed him with his namesake, "Gimper Dude!" Mike liked the compliment and found this askew asymptotic term of endearment better than any Welcome Mat or red-carpet VIP admission to our silly get-togethers for weed seshes with really good coffee or beer and bong hits. When asked, Mike reported to his guardians that, "I sure like Karl and Cully." "They got real nice friends." And no, when offered, Mike the Gimper Dude never accepted any beer, weed or blow. He stated that with all his meds he had on-board, our party drugs would haywire his shit up.

Mike paid us visits either via Cully driving the company van, or I'd motor over and pick him up in Brian's old 72 AMC Ambassador. This arrangement lasted maybe 2 years. Mike insisted that I burn rubber, drift hard corners and light up intersections any time the coast was clear and no cops were around. He was a car guy and motor head, just forever stuck in a wheelchair, surrounded by his good friends that lived and worked at a mortuary and crack house.

On a day we missed him, Cully reported that Mike had a seizure and stoke during the night at the facility and was no longer responsive to conversations nor shitty jokes and compliments from us. Funny how even dopers and drunks get incredibly remorseful when one of their own passes away, or becomes completely disabled. As you can expect, Marto was most visibly upset by this turn of events. I'm torn whether it'd be preferable to Cully being merely disabled, instead of completely dead. Don't avert your affections, he was your brother too.

I've lost a shit-load of pals and coworkers in these last decades. Tobacco did a number on my mates, but alcohol mopped up more than it's fair share. You see, my coworkers all had rough upbringings. So don't get upset that Cully used alcohol as a cure for PTSD. Alcohol is the only cure for shock, trauma and violent beatings as a child. I used to admit to shit my little brother did, just so I'd get the whippings, hair pullouts and TBI (traumatic brain injury) from open palmed slaps over the ears or closed fist punches when sticks and whips broke.

Alas, what doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger. I have serious doubts that these beatings and whippings by the folks that were supposed to care for us, love us and nurture us, made any of us still standing, stronger. Instead, we got parents that were poor country music fans with no chins and buck teeth, that taught us to forage for caloric sustenance outa the manure pile.

In my old age I believe I've lost my insulation from these types of violence. I completely understand me, Cully's, Callahan's, Dennis's, Franky's and Marto's attacks on "random victims" with rotten eggs, golfing balls out onto I-5 or shooting potatoes at traffic with our big 12-foot-wide surgical tube slingshot, but I get upset recalling the horrors Cully suffered. He never understood the abuse he received.

He also never healed from the big mistake called mental illness and alcoholism and that his parents were brain damaged, cruel, emotionally deranged and sick-in-the-head drunks. Cully never mounted any anger or resentment to his injuries. He likely assumed he deserved to be treated worse than a dog, beaten like a dead horse and never overcame these agonizing sores and distorted nightmares and painful sad hurdles barring his maturity or treatment and counseling.

A pal of mine declared me and Cully used pain like manure and cultivated voluminous art, music, theater and literature. I'm revealing my ingredients too easily and the world's best writers first compose the message they're trying to convey, then conceal it with plot and character development. In kind on Cully's tombstone, I'd etch the phrase, "Broken, bruised and weeping. A grown man that never grew beyond his toddler years." I deleted the phrase "whose scar tissue was stretched tighter'n a drum covering his giant frame." It stung writing it and hurts more re-reading it.

I'll likely keep writing recalled memories of our childhood adventures as a metaphor or parable veneer overlapping our permanent congenital sadness with tales of humor, good parties further enunciating Cully's creative powers with music, light shows and really funny quips. We were battered poor white farm-trash, but composing these tales allows me and Cully to be a little more than emotional cripples. These factual reports are pleasurable to compose and publish and with evermore stories I pray we could be heroes.

If you boys do hold an impromptu moment of silence for Cully, be sure to conclude it with a complete playing of Brian Eno's Music for Airports. Cully sent me a copy of it and swore it to be a 20th century Mona Lisa. I'm of the opinion he was correct. Surrounded by all his band mates and pals weeping at Cully's annual wakes, we'll never know if God was one of us.

If your eyes well up listening to Eno's Airport piece, you'll likely see a little boy with big eyes sitting next to you. It'll also underscore Cully's postmortem impressions upon you. His contributions were significant and impactful indeed. That little boy's words but a whisper, our deafness a shout.

I'll state it again, he was your little brother too.

Karl.