
 '##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!!
  ##:::: ##::'##.. ##:: ##.....:: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #498 !!
  #########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS!  !!
  ##.... ##: ##:::: ##: ##...:::: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "How About A Nice Game Of Chess?"        !!
  ##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> Cap'n Sparky                       !!
 ..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 3/3/99                                   !!
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        He flicked his way through the channels.  The volume was down low,
 barely audible.  The channels progressed steadily upward on the cable box.
 Channel 13: "...remember the 80s?"  Channel 18: "...ready for 80s Pop-Up
 Video!"  Channel 21: "...classic hits from the 80s."  Channel 31: "...son
 revolutionized the video industry with the video for his smash-hit
 Thriller."

        He rubbed his chin and thumbed the remote, pressing further on into
 the higher numbers.  "I just don't get it," he said to Julia, who was
 busily organizing her CDs in the corner.  "What is it you don't get?" she
 asked, pausing after placing two Adam Ant discs next to each other.

        "The whole 80s revival thing.  I don't understand why anyone in
 their right mind would want to go back there," he said quietly.  She
 smiled that special winning smile she had, her eyes lit up just right.
 She knocked over an unsorted pile of plastic jewel cases with her foot as
 she stood up.  She sat down next to him, pulling her legs up on the couch,
 "What the hell are you talking about," she kind of laughed, "the 80s
 kicked ass!"

        "Bullshit," he said, "I don't think you remember the 80s."

        "Yeah I do," she replied indignantly, "Stars Wars, New Wave, rap,
 tail end of punk, all those video games you love, it's all the 80s."

        "No, you remember what you've been reminded of.  You don't remember
 the way it really was."

        "Alright, tell me what I'm missing then, oh great swami of the way
 things really were!"

        He looked down at the remote, kind of nervously.  He hit the power
 button.  The television clicked off.  He was trying to remember what was
 so bad, what was so wrong with the 80s.  He put himself there and it all
 came rushing back with the kind of vibrancy that poets and artists dream
 of.  He remembered his Atari, but not the games.  They were unimportant.
 He remembered how the faux-woodgrain trim on the console went so well
 with his monstrous all-wood TV.  He remembered the smell behind the TV.
 The unique smell of super-heated sawdust.  He remembered how he used to
 fumble around behind the set, the warmth, the comforting smell as he'd
 hook up the convertor.  He remembered how he'd loosen and tighten the
 screws with a butterknife.

        He remembered everything in a woodgrain pattern.  Everything was
 brown and deep red.  He remembered how the lights used to seem much
 dimmer, but maybe it was just the glasses he used to wear.  They'd darken
 when exposed to bright light, and then return to normal in dim light.  He
 thought they were so damn cool, until their magic ran out and they stayed
 in a twilight half-polarized state.  He remembered how has father seemed
 ten feet tall, and he remembered how surprised he was when he found out
 that his dad was just a shade over six feet tall.

        He couldn't get the bad stuff, not yet.  He was really trying
 though.  Then one isolated incident snuck in, creeping in at the fringes
 of his memory...

        "Do you remember that made for TV movie 'The Day After'?" he asked.
 Julia shook her head.  He hardly paid attention to the response, "It was
 this mini-series, it seemed to go on forever.  It was all about the events
 that lead into a full thermonuclear war.  Basically, everything was cool
 at first.  People were living their lives.  Just another day.  Then a
 series of ground battles broke out in the Fulda Gap..."

        "What's that?" Julia asked.  She was getting kind of concerned.  He
 had that look on his face, she couldn't explain it.  She knew he was
 beginning to get a bit angry.  He had the tendency to get these really
 strange mood swings.  She could tell one might be coming on.

        He stopped for a second, and then said "It was a really important
 strategic pass.  It was the link between the Warsaw Pact ground forces and
 the NATO ground forces.  If you would read the news you'd hear tons about
 it.  If you payed close attention, you would think that the Russians could
 come charging through with tanks any day.  In the movie, the U.S.
 airbursted a tac-nuke over some invading Soviet forces and then everything
 went to hell.  This movie really spent time showing everyone the horror of
 it all, what would really happen if everybody went around tossing these
 frigging things around."

        "What," she said, "one bad U.S. against the world miniseries and
 your life's ruined?"

        "No," he replied, "it wasn't like that at all.  There were just
 these people, normal people, real... ummm... John Cougar type people, like
 Jack and Diane.  They just watched these events unfold on the TV then,
 poof, all gone.  Everything we worked for over the centuries, everything
 we dreamed of up in smoke.  All gone.  My aunt and my uncle were over my
 grandmother's, and my cousin was watching one of the later episodes with
 me and my brother.  My cousin asked, 'Why are they afraid of the snow.'
 I told him how it wasn't snow, it was fallout and it would make them sick
 and die."

        "So what?" she asked, and laid her head in his lap.  "So what?" he
 said.  With her head resting on his thighs, she could feel him getting
 angry.  She could swear he would get noticeably warmer when he'd get mad.
 She hated it when he got angry like this, almost no warning.  She never
 could figure out precisely when it would happen, what would touch him off.
 Julia now knew that "So what?" was definately the wrong thing to say at
 that moment.

        "Jesus Christ, I was six or seven fucking years old at the time,"
 he fumed, "Someone that young isn't supposed to know about fallout.  A
 seven year old isn't supposed to cry at night because some raisin-faced
 asshole in the goddamned White House talks about using nukes against the
 Russians to change their mind every chance he fucking gets!  Do you know
 how close we were?  How many 'almosts' and 'might have beens' there were?
 Just white light, searing heat, and the end of society.  They thought we
 could fucking win a nuclear war!  They thought it was entirely possible.
 The advice was to dig a hole, climb in and put some wood and doors over
 it.  They were telling us all in case the government fucks up, bury
 yourself so that the survivors won't have to deal with your frigging
 corpse!  A seven year old child could realize that... could grasp that
 those fuckers were full of shit, but the adults... the adults would just
 walk around and talk about this shit as if it was perfectly okay.  They
 would tell you how much worse it was when they were your age, the air-raid
 sirens and drills, duck and cover, all that shit.  They'd tell you how
 they remember the day Kruschev beat his shoe against the table... how he
 said, 'We will bury you!'  As if somehow that made it all perfectly okay!"

        She watched his face carefully.  He looked like he was really in
 pain.  She really didn't understand what thoughts could be racing through
 his head to make him so pissed.  She evisioned him at seven, this tiny
 kid, sitting in this huge chair reading a newspaper.  She almost smirked,
 but she was afraid he'd catch her and then get more angry.  Then
 everything would go bad.  He'd sit there silently, painfully silent.
 She'd try to reach him and he'd brush her hand away, like a bug.  It took
 less energy to fight the urge to smirk then it would to put up with his
 childish bullshit again tonight.  There was an uneasy silence.  She
 figured she had to say something.

        "I don't get it," she said in her best consoling voice, "all that
 worrying, what was the point?  It couldn't have happened, we know all that
 now..."

        He snorted out a disdainful laugh.  It cut her so deep.  She hated
 it when he acted like he knew something she didn't.  He would kind of
 lord it over her, treat her like a child.  "Couldn't have happened," he
 sneered, "Really now?  Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean that it
 wasn't possible.  It was possible, and then we'd all be dead.  We were all
 ready to go.  We knew it.  Why do you think the 80s were so amazingly
 ruthless, huh?  Why do you think there was all that high-finance shit, the
 banking scandals, the recession, all of it?  Why?  Because everyone
 thought it could happen.  Hell, everyone thought it probably would.
 Personally, I'm still amazed that it didn't."

        She looked up at his face.  She could tell he wanted to say
 something.  He needed to spit something out.  She hoped for the best, he
 could say the most amazingly cruel things at moments like these.  She
 prayed he wouldn't, that she could sleep next to him with his arm over
 her.  He looked so vulnerable at times like this. Even if she didn't love
 him like she did, she would find it hard not to feel something for him at
 times like this.  Sometimes something so simple would just hit him so
 strangely.

        He looked at the blank television screen, his eyes were vacant.  He
 looked like he was watching some banal sitcom.  That struck Julia as
 almost funny, almost as if he was acting on reflex.  He started suddenly,
 but slowly, "Some nights I wake up, and I'm really thankful that you and I
 got the chance to meet in the first place.  It sounds so goddamn hokey,
 but it's true.  I'm so glad that we didn't fuck up.  I'm glad the Russians
 didn't fuck up.  I'm fucking ecstatic everyone I knew is still allowed to
 live out their lives normally, that they're not dead and buried by their
 own hands."

        They were both quiet for what seemed like ages.  She felt his
 fingers on her head, tracing light ethereal patterns in her hair.  He had
 really calmed down now.  It made her feel good, really good, but tired.
 She wondered, briefly if there was something sick about this relationship,
 if there was something wrong.  She'd think about it much more often later
 on in their relationship, but for now it was nothing more than an empty
 thought.  She really loved him.  She loved the way he made her feel when
 he let out his feelings about her as a post script to the strangest
 tirades.  It seemed to her that there was some part of his brain that was
 alway "turned on" to her, that would always find a connection to her.

        "I love you," she said quietly, her voice barely audible.  He
 looked down at her, her hair arrayed about her head like a halo.  It drew
 attention to the features of her beautiful pale face.  He smiled down at
 her awkwardly and said, "I love you, too."

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 !! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!  #498, WRITTEN BY: CAP'N SPARKY - 3/3/99 !!
