The Real Racketeers

I saw the forest despite the trees long before I was prodded and probed and then discarded on Mars by the bubble-headed boobies most Earthlings refer to as the Grays. Long before I had to give up my little Cape Cod house and my Japanese sedan for an appliance carton and a shopping cart. Back when I still roamed Earth as a citizen and, more importantly, as a consumer.

Yep, even as a regular, everyday type of guy, I could see what was really happening in the arenas of buying and selling. Hell, I knew most American businesses and all of the major corporations were run by racketeers. In other words, liars and cheats. But in corporate America, being a liar and a cheat simply means you're motivated. Ever since the 1980s, anyway, when Yuppie corporate raiders ransacked the Fortune 500 companies and anything else they found on the New York board that had "Take Me, I'm Yours" stamped all over their track records. The corporate raiders replaced the heirs of old money and tossed them all out on their ears. "Old Man Clubhouse Power Broker" was put out to pasture and he wasn't even trotted out when they thought they just might need him back. The raiders simply changed the rules and made it a new game. The world was now the oyster of a new generation of liars and cheats, only they were called movers-and-shakers now and they could do absolutely no wrong.

The new "Masters of the Universe" hired Madison Avenue to sell their shit to a consumer market that seemed to thrive on it by the bucketful. They convinced Americans that they actually needed a pill to make them sleep and one to keep them awake. One to make them poop and one to stop them from pooping. A pill so they wouldn't sneeze or have to blow their noses in public. A pill to help men with their tallywhackers when it was time to make a baby or to simply make whoopee.

The Madison Avenue liars and cheats made so much money for corporations and for Wall Street that no one on Earth wanted the lying and the cheating to stop. Americans were so convinced that they needed to be wired-in to their families and their significant others and to stay abreast of the moving-and-shaking world that no one would ever be caught dead without a pager or a cell phone or PDA or iPOD or all the rest of the electronic gizmos that can be replaced by simple foresight and planning. In other words, commonsense.

TVs were tossed out for home theaters costing ten times as much. A personal computer became a life raft if you were to stay in touch and keep up with all the multimedia happenings around the globe. Most of which any fool could do without.

A simple cup of coffee became a two-dollar, high-end, caffeine-injected experience, where the ambiance was not so much in the cup as it was on the cup's label and under the trendy European umbrella where it was imbibed. Cheap little Japanese cars morphed into luxury sedans rivaling anything in America or the best German imports. No one in America wore sneakers anymore. They were referred to by their brand names and their three-figure price tags were quick to be pointed out.

By the new millennium, it was all over. No one on Earth knew the true value of anything anymore. But it didn't matter to them as long as they still tuned in the next reality show on TV, not realizing that reality is what they once had, in full color and in stereo, just by waking up in the morning. And most of it was free.

Compared to contemporary corporate America, the Chicago gangster and racketeer, Al Capone, was just a kid with a lemonade stand.

Man, I wouldn't go back to Earth to take a shit.

Act Of Contrition

So, I may no longer live on Earth but I'm still an Earthling. I no longer live in the United States of America, either, but I'll always be an American and that's just fine with me. I'm just no longer proud to be either an Earthling or an American. That's all. But, out here on the red planet, none of that matters.

I can't blame two months of living under the Martian ruins for how I feel about good ol' planet Earth and its most powerful nation. Foraging for Martian food and water for the past eight weeks didn't make me bitter. I foraged like a rodent in the streets and alleys of America's biggest cities for a lot longer than that. Eight years, in fact. Long enough to know that living the American dream was only available to those who towed the line and kept their mouths shut. Those who married and reproduced like good little citizens. The happy consumers who bought a lot of American products and never complained about their quality or safety. Those who obeyed.

And now that the 7th Anniversary of 9/11 is over and done with, I'm emboldened enough to say that I feel more empathy for those in the so-called Third World countries on Earth than I do for anyone else on that backward and greedy planet. You know who I mean. The ones who eat a bowl of rice or eat mud pies or suck on stones for their supper. The hungry masses who have become the horrified masses when they learn about or see Americans dancing the jig while sucking down pizza and burgers on American television. And realizing that this is not their supper but their snack food.

Americans will never realize the real truth about September 11th, 2001. If they ever did, they'd probably never own up to it. The truth about 9/11 is that America put itself in the cross hairs of its enemies every time it squandered foreign lives to save a nickel on a gallon of gasoline, every time its companies made a thousand percent profit on a product by paying foreign workers next to nothing to make it, often in "sweat shops" that employed underage children and, of course, every time they danced the jig in TV commercials while sucking down pizza and burgers. While most of the Third World simply went hungry.

It's no way to run a planet.

Hippity Hop

I may be on the lam again sooner than I think. Thanks to someone on planet Earth who recently reported me to the Illuminati. But I'll just let that person's own karma deal with it.

Hell, I'm not afraid of the goddamn Illuminati. Without their Armani suits, their chauffeured limousines and that sorry-ass rabble of starry-eyed conspiracy theorists who think the Illuminati are descendants of the Knight's Templar or at least the Freemasons and therefore worship them from afar, they're nothing. Just a lot of talk that only a bunch of bought-and-paid-for heads of state and top-drawer military men seem to really go for.

And that's because those heads of state and crooked generals are, in turn, bought and paid for, themselves, by the Illuminati. It's sort of a symbiotic relationship between a bunch of bottom-feeders whose clout with the real powers-that-be is pretty much Earthbound. Big-ass deal.

I, on the other hand, can come and go as I please because I never hurt anyone. And that kind of karma keeps working for you when the so-called shit hits the fan and the so-called heat is just around the corner. In the long run, it always pays to be a good guy.

So, whether or not I'm here or there or anyplace else, I'll be going and going just like the goddamn Energizer Bunny. And there's nothing the Illuminati can do about it. And they damn well know it.

Fred's Note: After I wrote and posted this story I decided to change the title from "Exit Stage Right" to "Hippity Hop" because I wound up talking about The Energizer Bunny. But I didn't feel like re-posting it just to make the URL match the title because that's a lot of extra work and I was just too damn hopped out to do it. So I was. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Anyway, I'm not just sitting around on my keister, waiting for Planet X to rattle Earth's electromagnetic cage, as it were. Not that there's a hell of a lot do on Mars, don't get me wrong. Foraging for mushrooms and algae and trying to locate a few drops of water in the mammoth underground caverns pretty much takes up an entire Martian day, if you really want to know the truth. But there are other things to do with the six or seven spare minutes left over each day and worrying about planet Earth is not one of them.

As I said before, most of us Martian cave dwellers are human abductees from Earth whom the Grays dumped here after they found out there was more alcohol and illegal substances in our blood than they anticipated. Which means they can't siphon us to fill their own tanks for breeding. The little clone asses. Cloning yourself nearly to death pretty much sums up the underlying truth about the Grays' intellectual capacity. Building spaceships that can flit in and out of Earth's atmosphere on the whisper of gravity isn't exactly a Nobel-Prize-winning achievement if you're too lazy to get it on with the old Gray lady once in a while and make some more of yourselves. Hell, any two-bit homeless asshole from any run-down American city could have told you that.

So, just what, exactly, am I doing in the meantime? What takes up my life activity when I'm not slugging it out with other Martian bums over part of a left-over Big Mac that someone had in their pocket when the Grays dumped their latest shipment of solar system rejects under the Cydonia Face?

Hell, I don't really know. Most of us are so goddamn tired from sucking red stones all day long for ancient salt — if you can find any stones left unsucked, that is — that we only have enough time to remind ourselves that the Grays are our real enemies and not the rich and powerful and selfish Earthlings who never gave us a single blessed thought from day one.

So, I'll try later to remember what the hell it was that I wanted to say. Then, if I can remember to write it down, I'll try to find the time to post it here. If I can remember my password.

The Big Picture

Being forced to leave planet Earth just after the new millennium rolled around was sort of a mixed blessing for me. True, I no longer had my cushy service-industry job, where I could smart off to customers all day long on the phone and via e-mail without affecting the size of our customer database, whatsoever. And, of course, I no longer had the use of my comfortable recliner. No, it wasn’t a goddamn La-Z-Boy.

I didn't have my cable TV and VCR anymore, either. That’s right, I didn’t opt for the satellite feed to a big-ass, high-end home theater and TIVO deal because I liked paying less for the same shitty channels instead of being one of those sorry saps who gladly gave up half his monthly income to channel surf nonstop because all TV programming was the same. Nothing but belly buttons and butt cracks, crude humor, bed-hopping, tear-jerker family shows, sci-fi that is actually horror and fantasy, reality crap and 80% commercials. Did I miss anything?

I also didn’t miss having my sorry life controlled by subliminal advertising, ULF low-frequency mind-control beams the Air Force soaked us with day in and day out, or having to drag the garbage cans out to the curb in the rain, snow and freezing weather just because it was Wednesday.

But, no longer being able to call Earth my home also allowed me to see the forest for the trees, if you will. I now see planet Earth from a distance and that allows me to see it for what it really is instead of being unable to rise above the daily routine of eating, sleeping, pooping, praying, commuting and making whoopee long enough to actually get The Big Picture.

All right, all right, I know I’m rattling on and that’s because I’m still a little rattled about not having my cushy service industry job, my non-La-Z-Boy recliner and TV that wasn't worth watching, because all that crap was still a hell of a lot better than choking on Martian dust and looking over your shoulder for rogue Grays and marauding Reptilians all day long. So, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, OK, Smart Guy, and just what is the goddamn Big Picture?

Alright, so I’ll tell you, already. It’s pretty goddamn simple, actually.

The whole, big-ass, stupid, secret deal about planet Earth is that you’re all down there and you can’t leave except when you die (or get abducted and dumped somewhere else by aliens) and, in the meantime, the powers-that-be have got you all by the short hairs.

And, knowing that, you still look forward to your next drive-thru meal, American Idol and getting lucky on the weekends.

Why do I bother?

Editor's Note 4-6-13: No, none of the Fred Fortune posts are autobiographical tales about Michael Casher. Michael Casher was never a homeless bum from L.A. He was never a CSR who "hung up" on customers. He never stole a thing in his life and he was never employed by any kind of store. Fred Fortune is a fictitious character with a fictitious name and his life and times are fictional. For more information, read the sidebar texts. Thank you.

Politics, Schmolitics

Oh, yeah, I’m sooo glad I don’t live on Earth anymore but before I tell you why let me tell you that most of us former Earthlings living in the Mars underground are the former American homeless. You know, the folks pushing the rusty shopping carts all around the downtown area and sleeping near steam vents and so on. Yep, that’s us.

We were dumped here on Mars after the goddamn Grays (that’s right, the bubble-heads with the big, black almond eyes) discovered that most us had blood that was way too thin for our DNA to be worth anything. As far as it being soup starter for boosting their pathetic, cloned DNA, that is. Pricks. Yeah, human blood gets just a little thin on a diet of Wild Irish Rose and, in some cases, dollar-store shoe polish. But, I digress from the main topic. Earth Politics. May as well write about a cockroach race somewhere.

Anyway, I’m sooo glad that I don’t have to feel guilty about not voting for any of the U.S. Presidential candidates this election. I mean, electing McCain will almost guarantee continued warfare around the globe. Lets face it, war is prosperity for all the good ol' boys who rub elbows and asses with a federal administration. Always was and always will be. If McCain gets to roam the White House unbridled, gasoline will be ten dollars a gallon and only the good ol' boys will be able to afford it. The only store in America will be Walmart with its shelves chock full of wares that will reflect the astronomical price of gas. Maybe Mr. And Mrs. Smith will no longer be able to afford to drive to Walmart every other day for disposable diapers and fresh crullers but it won’t matter because there'll be a Walmart every fifty feet.

Then there’s Obama. If elected, he'll inadvertently turn the White House into a half-way house for every special interest minority group in America. The Oval Office will become a soup kitchen for every disaffected U.S. citizen who feels the need for some government reparation to offset their miserable lives, regardless of race, color, creed, national origin or sexual preference. They’ll be sleeping on the front porch to get in. They’ll lie and cheat and even knock heads to be first in line. And the South Lawn will be a tent city for those who heard the dinner bell a little too late. And now Hillary won’t even be in the picture because her political overcoat had just a little too much red in the collar and not enough blue where it really counted. Otherwise, she might have dispersed all the bums hanging around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by 2012, when the shit really hits the fan.

And, Ralph Nader? Forget him. If elected, he’ll remove all the vehicles from America's highways as unsafe and you’ll all be peddling bicycles or else walking. And there won’t be any products on the shelves when you get to Walmart because he’ll fire everyone in the FDA and the USDA and he’ll take over Underwriter’s Laboratories and turn it into a mad scientist lab for seeking out that elusive product that is totally risk free.

And that other dark horse candidate, what’s his face? Well, all I can say is this: Who in the hell is this guy?

Yeah, yeah, I know. I didn't mention any of the VP candidates. But I never did get all excited about political tag-a-longs. Hell, anybody can take in a stray dog and just about anybody can be a stray dog. The 2008 VP wannabes just know where the food dish is, that's all.

Yep, I'd rather suck Martian stones for ancient salt than cast another ballot on Earth. Anytime.