Hey Jim...All My Rowdy Friends Have Lost Their Minds.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

and trying not to saunter down that road without good boots I begin to wonder whether this particular baby group gives any of its money to Theodore Geisel's family?

That man had more useful things to say than any 1000 "philosophers" you could name, all put together.

Needless to say, he's out of style, along with Dr Spock and Jim Henson and C Everett Coop and anyone else who gave a damn about kids, even if they weren't always right.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Really not trying to derail but this thread is fucking AWESOME!!!!

[Triple Zero]

this was good, Rog -- It spoke to me very personally. I think I am hiding in my house these days, out of fear.

this must end.

Same for me. I'm hiding, possibly in fear, in my house, in front of the computer all day, feverishly working on "projects" that are supposed to finally fix things. Except I start three new ones before I finish the first and it never gets done. Something ought to be changed, but I don't know how, or what. Everything I try seems to wind up down the same road. But I'll never give up, I promised myself that much.

Thanks for writing that Roger. Oh and I finally looked up Curly on wikipedia--I may lack the gland for that kind of thing, but I think I finally get the reference somewhat.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

this was good, Rog -- It spoke to me very personally. I think I am hiding in my house these days, out of fear.

this must end.

Same for me. I'm hiding, possibly in fear, in my house, in front of the computer all day, feverishly working on "projects" that are supposed to finally fix things. Except I start three new ones before I finish the first and it never gets done. Something ought to be changed, but I don't know how, or what. Everything I try seems to wind up down the same road. But I'll never give up, I promised myself that much.

Thanks for writing that Roger. Oh and I finally looked up Curly on wikipedia--I may lack the gland for that kind of thing, but I think I finally get the reference somewhat.

One very common fear is fear of success.  If you never finish anything, you never have to confront that fear, right?

[Captain Utopia]

For me it seems more like a fear of change, and success would make quite the change. I think this closeted adoration of the status quo makes me a good monkey.

[NotPublished]

But why the fear of change? What is it that is holing you back? Have you found a comfort zone and you just want to stay there? I know nothing of your life so obviously I can't say anything.

-- who ever wants this to apply to them

[Cainad (dec.)]

I'm not on that highway yet. In fact, I'm not on any highway right now. Right now, I'm chilling out at the truck stop. It's a nice big one, and all of my friends and I are here, biding our time before we finally have to get in the car and choose which road out of here we're going to take. There's a long road trip ahead of us, and we're bumming around here to stock up on snacks and buy the relevant road maps (hoping they're still up-to-date) and check out the brochures they have next to the door.

The lost highway is only one of the ways out of here, but it's an interesting one to look at. Funny thing is, they make it look like you're not supposed to go that way, as if it's not a real road. Some days they have orange traffic cones set up just so that it preserves this impression, but I know better. People will honk at you and make a fuss, but there's always a way to maneuver your car and get on that highway, despite all the shiny road signs that will draw your attention away.

Still, it's not like I have to get on that highway now, or whenever I choose to leave the truck stop. I hear it crosses all the other highways at one point or another. And in any case, I don't feel like leaving yet.

It's kinda nice here, really. There's a distinct sense of temporary hospitality. You can claim a table and a few chairs to set your bag down and have a bite to eat from the slightly overpriced food joint, taking it in turns with your buddies to guard the table and keep the seats while you stretch your legs and procrastinate. Maybe take your car to the car wash before putting it back in the paring lot; gotta get on that highway looking nice and clean, after all. I get nervous while navigating, so I spend a lot of time here studying the maps of the region, plotting possible routes... but there's that one route I can't quite figure out. That lost highway always seems to be in the corner of the maps, only ever showing a few bits of it, like the cartographers went out of their way to plot as little of it as possible. It makes me curious, and fearful at the same time. Do I dare take a road when I don't know where it will lead me?

I don't know yet. Besides, I gotta hit the toilet and read a few more pages of this paperback before getting back in the car. I'm in no rush. Not yet.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Many skeletons are found in truck stop diners.

Fact.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Many skeletons are found in truck stop diners.

Fact.

Well shit. That doesn't make me feel any better about the quality of the bathrooms here.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Many skeletons are found in truck stop diners.

Fact.

Well shit. That doesn't make me feel any better about the quality of the bathrooms here.

Hey, carniverous roach swarms have to eat, too.

We have a truck stop 2 miles from the refinery.  It IS America, all wrapped up in one horrible, horrible facility.

[Payne]

I stand on an overpass, slightly drunk. tons of metal and rubber and meat rush by underneath me all going in one direction. As I lean on the guard rail that stops the little people jumping off I smoke a cigarette and the oily foulness of its smoke caresses my throat and lungs as it slides down down down.

There are others here, but we don't see each other caught as we are by the mythic highway that rolls beneath us - a terrible river that harks back to the ancient dry Nile that once failed to flow past the necropolises of the ancient Egyptians. Dry, it was, but it would flow again and the Egyptians would make entire religions from this fact.

The highway is worse. It flows, but is dry. It never floods and never changes. Straight as a spear with, one can only presume, a wicked barbed point that buries itself in the heart of the horizon. In a very real sense, the curvature of the Earth means the only way is down. You can follow it all the way around and end up back where you started, but you've fallen a long way in the meantime and by the time you make it back there is only one direction that matters anymore. Onward, ever onward.

I can hear the screams as others climb down from the overpass to join the highway, overcome as they are by curiosity (or as some would have it - a death wish). Some of them make it onto the cracked and faded and blood stained tarmac and join the exodus of the damned, and they become mere spectacles for us, the audience. I can see them now, when before they climbed down I could not, but now they are one of many. A detail. Some will perhaps be random elements, changing everything, but their world is not ours yet.

From behind, you can only tell that they are determined, leaning into the opposing wind of their own better sense their heads are bowed, shoulders bunched. I want to see their faces. I want to know what terrible scars they carry, what the troubles of the highway have imparted upon them. So I cross back across the overpass, suddenly I am rooted to the spot in the middle of the road, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide as an 18 wheeler bears down on me...

[Nast]

I stand on an overpass, slightly drunk. tons of metal and rubber and meat rush by underneath me all going in one direction. As I lean on the guard rail that stops the little people jumping off I smoke a cigarette and the oily foulness of its smoke caresses my throat and lungs as it slides down down down.

There are others here, but we don't see each other caught as we are by the mythic highway that rolls beneath us - a terrible river that harks back to the ancient dry Nile that once failed to flow past the necropolises of the ancient Egyptians. Dry, it was, but it would flow again and the Egyptians would make entire religions from this fact.

The highway is worse. It flows, but is dry. It never floods and never changes. Straight as a spear with, one can only presume, a wicked barbed point that buries itself in the heart of the horizon. In a very real sense, the curvature of the Earth means the only way is down. You can follow it all the way around and end up back where you started, but you've fallen a long way in the meantime and by the time you make it back there is only one direction that matters anymore. Onward, ever onward.

I can hear the screams as others climb down from the overpass to join the highway, overcome as they are by curiosity (or as some would have it - a death wish). Some of them make it onto the cracked and faded and blood stained tarmac and join the exodus of the damned, and they become mere spectacles for us, the audience. I can see them now, when before they climbed down I could not, but now they are one of many. A detail. Some will perhaps be random elements, changing everything, but their world is not ours yet.

From behind, you can only tell that they are determined, leaning into the opposing wind of their own better sense their heads are bowed, shoulders bunched. I want to see their faces. I want to know what terrible scars they carry, what the troubles of the highway have imparted upon them. So I cross back across the overpass, suddenly I am rooted to the spot in the middle of the road, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide as an 18 wheeler bears down on me...

Wow.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

this fread is

[Jenne]

I sometimes think I was kidnapped and dragged onto this infamous highway, captive to a madman behind the wheel.  But each time I look in the rearview mirror, it's my eyes I see looking back.  And there's a twinkle in one and a sad, depressed drag to the corner of the other.  As I travel at breakneck speed, I remember here and there that I don't know where I'm going and neither do I know how to get there.  The signs have tagging on them I can't make out, and the sky is dark and threatening.  I don't want to stop because there's nowhere TO stop.  And each time I think about doing so, my foot presses down and I go faster than ever before.

I try not to take passengers, but somehow they end up behind me anyway.  They don't like my driving style, they think I go too fast and change lanes without thinking or looking.  They're wrong, I just have a long and shortview of what's behind and really can't care much about what's ahead.

Because each time I try to care about what's ahead, it changes so drastically I would just as well as have not bothered in the first place.  

I'm waiting for a dead end that never comes, if you want to know the truth.  I have the constant conundrum of dying of thirst and yet desperately needing to go pee, having tons of cash but nowhere to spend it, nauseous to the point that I really just need to eat something comforting to my stomach.

Driving at fast speeds also tends to soothe me for some strange reason.  This highway is both my salvation and my doom.

[Requia ☣]

I came here to escape, I saw something horrible and fled for the nearest freeway.

At least, I *thought* I saw something horrible.  It would be downright pleasant and comforting to have it back right now.  In the meantime there's a pileup in front of me keeping me from going any farther, and I've seen to much to ever turn back, so I shout at the people driving on the frontage road, trying to get them to take the next onramp.

It occurs to me that that's rather horrible thing to do, but I can only laugh at the thought.