I'm in a smaaaaaaaallllllllll town.

They pointed at me in the grocery store.�

I shit you not.

Heh.� Paranoia rules:� it was two girls, and what appeared to be their dad, when you're hiding, its the fuzz.

Been trying to make myself emotionally vomit, but something tells me I'm a perfect pig of emotion, with No Emotional Bulemia possible.

I suppose I should start all the way out, and work my way in.� This may take awhile.

I live currently in a suburb of a small town.� Small town has about 35,000 or so people in it.� The WASP mariner communtiy suburb I'm currently in has about 5000 people.�

It wants to be a mariner town, nestled in between patchwork houses and farmland, open water and boat launches.� So, why not.� I try to see people how they are, and how they want me to see them.� If it matters nothing to me, why not believe it. And if it was the banal I had to believe, well then, in middle-America, that's nothing new either.

Words like banal, trite, cliche', and often mundane were felt and understood everywhere, but words seldom uttered.

They knew, but were unaware.

Pretty rare for a whole town to have to put a half-assed act together, but it happens.� Y'know, some towns have acts. Like� "The mining town", or whatever the hell they try to sell it as in the instant history that America routinely sells itself, and culture gone stale ten years ago.� The houses don't really change, the act keeps selling itself without any differences, and nobody notices the distinct lack of growth or change, content in their "mariner town", atmosphere.

Its funny to see some towns, and all their acts.� I stopped going to their jubilees, because whatever town you're in all across America, the jubilee, like their local crop or whatever, "The Cherry Festival", or "Potato Festival", or their past like "Pioneer Days" or their motif "Mariner Days", whatever else they drape a banner across the main roads to announce and whoop it up in a beer tent, it becomes a real side-show.� Freaks abound, mutants of all varieties, which only really deviate so far from the norm.� Souls that hadn't lifted their heads from their routines in years and it changed their shape, come out for a howl.� Can't handle that without breaking into cackles laughter at times, so I cut it out.

The jubilees always contain a retard.� At some point, you will think, "Oh God, how long until they start taunting it.", as they get their disabled crudely drunk.� They always lug out the 'tard.� Sometimes he wears a black "Motley Crue" t-shirt and carries a black ferret that is a darling of all the locals, and just soaks it up until he turns to you, and� you start laughing in his motherfucking face because your friend is standing behind him with a look on his face that says, "What the fuck is that!" to the deviance of the prevailing opinion of the crowd, because you just stopped in podunk nowhere to get sustenance after a massive whoop it up in someplace where the act is just as vapid, but backed by more greenbacks with about the same level of banality and triteness. That's a story for another time, and that guy, despite all available evidence to the contrary, might not have actually been a retard.� Bordeline.� Functional.

Nothing against him.�

But if you want me to belive that you are "The Fish-Sandwich Capital of the World"� then hey,� you fucking got it you podunk motherfucker.� Who woulda' thought, way the fuck out here this whole time.� So you can understand why I don't care.��

The streets are fresh, not worn like it was simply a route to another place.� The streets led only to themselves, as often American-old suburbs will.

American old only goes so far.

Other mariner towns had the act down pat, but more-or-less, everyone's experience would be the same in any other wanna-be mariner town, or any old suburb of middle aged white neurotics across the country who spend too much looking at each other and not talking.

And in a human sense, there are just some things about people, that we all have in common, just different stressors.

Enough about that.�

It is what it is, and nobody talks about it.�

Everybody knows everybody.� And if you don't, you ask a friend.� Gossip runs thick and quick.

Its a smaaaaaaaalllllllll town.

And I'm here.