Times are though. The face of the clock is weathered and worn. Its hands are calloused: enlarged and exaggerated from strangling every last second out of the waking day. By nightfall, its lips are blue and its breath cold. But with rest comes revival... just try not to be in bed when opportunity knocks – it tends to turn its back and walk quickly... and quickly... carrying a big stick of dynamite. Work is hard.This is the struggle issue.My eyes are heavy... in the airport terminal with their bags packed, but too much to carry on for storage in the overhead compartment. Just need to get away for awhile. Somewhere dark... like Alaska in December. Don’t talk to me while I’m breathing. It takes too much concentration.And you haven’t written to me.Was it something I said? You know, I can change... actually, no... I can’t change. I’m a compulsive liar. I have a problem... so don’t laugh.Since we last spoke, I’ve lost pieces of myself. Pieces for which there can be no prosthesis. Funny how you think some things are going to last forever. They don’t. they never do. So… to counteract this disillusionment, I speak in disjointed streams-of-consciousness and leap from fragmented thought of fragmented thought like the next self-medicated writer-hack... but better looking.Struggles...Excuse me, mister street-performer busker guy? Yes…yes, you. What are you doing here? You’ve never been here before... so why are you here now? Do you realize that you’re destroying my mental map of the world? You’ve just taken a fuck-off bug fat blood-red crayon and scribbled all over it so hysterically that it looks something like a striking diagram of the apocalypse – an epicenter of enflamed menstruation. You’re very being here is challenging my reality. You’re now in my world... in my immediate proximity. Much too close to me, and I don’t like it... not one bit.So you stand there, looking conveniently cool, strumming away at your acoustic guitar, disseminating air-borne audio-anti-matter... being just generally very fucking cosmetic. Aloof and awkwardly attractive like a Swedish super-model, chiseled from a subhuman-sized slab of Revlon, parading pre-warn denim and… is that corduroy? Your cheek bones are stunning. Your hair, flaxen and free-flowing, is gorgeous. I love you. I wonder how many times I would have to fold your lifeless corpse before you would fit into your guitar case. I’m thinking about three.And you know what makes me hate you the most? Well, allow me to tell you, fucky... it’s you’re sheer lack or originality. Can you even sing or play the guitar? You’re having a hard time convincing me. I mean, for one thing, you’re playing covers. And, sure, most buskers play covers. I guess they figure that people want to be reminded of the songs they catch the train to avoid listening to while stuck in drive-time grid-lock. But, seriously... Jack Johnson!? Tree-grow please! Jack Johnson sucks at being Jack Johnson!! What makes you think that you are going to be him any better than he is? Especially when he is the guy that he already is that you’re trying to be!? Huh!? And, besides that, other than making far too many albums of completely monotone, nondescript ‘sunsets over the ocean’ ‘let’s hold hands and smile stupidly like Cerebral Palsy outpatients in a respite care ward on fish-finger day’ music, he does other stuff… makes movies, apparently, and... ummm... goes surfing. And that always looks good on a resume. Especially, say, if you’re going for the position of surfing instructor at a film-school camp’. I’m sure it’s a growing industry.Change... why do I hate it so much? I seem to complain about everything and yet I still want to preserve the status quo? Do I really enjoy complaining that much? And why do I feel like Carrie-fucking-Bradshaw as I sit here writing this?Okay, so... ‘change’... lets look at that. They say change is good but if I were given the choice I’d take the holiday in half a palpitated heartbeat. And I’m only taking the holiday as long as I know that everything is going to be the same when I get back. I want everything... everything... to be exactly the way I left it. I don’t want to see any mystery magazines on my coffee table, or find any random real estate fridge magnet calendars in my kitchen – no matter how convenient they may be. And if my grass so much as thinks about growing itself out to suit the style of the season, there is going to be hell to pay... or a lawn-mowing service away.But alone I can’t stop the world from turning – none of us can. And I cant stop the grass from growing, the fridge magnets from appearing or the buskers from sucking. So we have to work at it together... like some sort of school correspondence group therapy sessions. Together we can stand and fight the formidable force of consumerism and thoughtless, disposable culture… page by page by page. Still, if you ever happen to travel to the Earth’s core any time soon and stumble across a giant break switch, then give that fucker a big pull for me, will you?