What time is it?

   Dave stopped mid stride.  Nik Turner looked back, smiled, and slowed his stroll, bemused.

"What time is it?" Nik asked, as Dave looked all around, confused.

    "Wait, how did we get the fuck here? This is-- wait, this is The Comet!! This is the states, man. Weren't we just in Northampton? The fuck is going on!??"

Many of the bar's patrons looked at Dave Brock.  Some of them shook their head and laughed.  Another tweaked out homeless guy, they may have thought.

Nik stopped walking and stopped smiling.  He looked at the ceiling of the Comet and nodded, then back at Dave, and said.

   "Windowpanes.  I had one.  You ate two.  Then there was the cocaine."

    "No, Nik, you and Robert did the acid.  Lemmy and Alan and I abstained because someone has to keep the train on the goddamn rails. Wait.  Where's Lemmy?"

Nik convinced him to get a pint and they took a stool each at the bar.  The place was abuzz and an old Neu song played above them on the speakers.  

All around them swirled the unreality of a time-space continuum that was confounded by both a rare but natural shift in quantum energy, and the effects of the current music group's chocolate synthesizer, or as our loving reader may know it, the Dimone-Z62-A Multidimensional Super Moog. 

Kraftpark was busy setting up gear on the Comets meager stage.  Ralf, Florian, and Klaus all simultaneously realized that they didn't actually have a fourth band member, and looked at each other suspiciously.  Then waves of realization and recognition spread on Ralf's face.

    "Do either of you remember that time when there were two Kraftparks?" Ralf asked his bandmates.

"Like, another band was impersonating us? Touring as us?" queried Klaus, as he hurriedly plugged in cords to pedals.

    "NO," spat Ralf curtly, "as in like TWO of all of us, not clones but exact copies!"

Klaus and Florian just stared at him for a second.

   "Neither of you remember that?"  Ralf's forehead pinched as he tried to puzzle it out.

"Uh...I don't," Florian piped in, "Are you feeling alright, Ralf?"

    "Stop!  I'm perfectly lucid and fine, Flor.  I haven't even smoked yet tonight." 

The Comet's manager walked past them, and he realized they didn't have 'time' to discuss it further. They hurriedly finished setting up and, in lieu of a soundcheck, launched into a newer song that they'd been working on, "Resistor".

When Florian played the chocolate synth solo during the bridge interlude, he noticed a couple of hippie looking gentleman get up from one end of the bar and rush up toward the stage, dancing and gawking.  It almost looked like those guys from Hawklords.  They were staring at his gear.

    "Look!  It's the chocolate synthesizer!" yelled Dave, gyrating spastically and pointing. 

Nik Turner was tripping very hard and only heard Klaus as he called

"Resistor Resistor

The flurry and jive,

Resistor Resistor

You're barely alive

The blister the blister

You gave to your soul

Resistor Resistor

It's taking control!"

The music was cranked as the crowd began to sway and pulse with the sound.

Dave Brock had seemingly lost his mind as he lunged under the chocolate moog and messed with a wire under it.  Feedback ripped through the club and the music petered to a stop.  Brock was attempting to rip the moog off of the keyboard stand and Florian straight up punched him really hard in the nose. 

"What the hell are you doing?!  That's my gear, fucker!!"

 Blood spurted slowly out of his nose, but Dave did not slow, picking up the chocolate synthesizer and getting into a tug of war with Florian.  

The club manager ran up to the stage and grabbed Brock from behind in a headlock, but not before Dave located and pressed a very special switch on the 'moog'.  As he was pulled away and thrown to the stage floor, the Dimone Z62A was activated.   Inside the device, a countdown had begun.

Florian, who was quite ignorant as to what Brock had actually just done, sat back down in his seat, swearing and placing the chocolate synth back on its stand. He licked his fingers, glaring at Dave Brock, who was now being led out to the alley by the club's huge bouncer Lou.  He could just be heard yelling

   "I'm Dave fucking Brock!! You've never heard of HAWK WIND???!!"

as the door closed behind them.  The band muttered, drank huge swigs of their drinks, and launched into the L.H. Opus.

Nik Turner was tripping his ass off and had not noticed anything had happened. He was still dancing to Resistor, which, in his mind, had not stopped playing.    

-

 The Silver Beetles' first date in Paris raised eyebrows that brought crowds to the rest of their concerts there. And so to Jens' surprise, Paris earned them more money than it cost.

"Shame we haven't any dates set up, we could keep touring 'til the end of '65…" grumbled John.

"I think I could set something up with me mates in Leeds, would be good to be back in Merry Olde England for a bit," replied Ringo. "Just a little club, a few friends, most I can do like this."

And so there they were, a few days of the cheapest possible travel options later. With such short notice, the Leeds concert was a bust, but a blast for them, probably their most enjoyable concert in… 1968.

Jens only learned something was up with time when he went to book the ferry back to the Continent and the timetables were for 1982… and also, the band he managed was famous - the ticket lady even begged for autographs.

Of course after all these centuries he'd gained a nose for the supernatural and had suspected Don for quite a while. Confronted, Don confessed he was a foreigner in this universe, an invasive element.

"If we've so magically become famous, then perhaps we're rich too?" Don wondered, and phoned his bank in Hamburg…Yes, he had plenty in the bank, enough to keep the band touring in - he started daydreaming - Seattle if he wanted.

"Play in Seattle huh?" Jens said sharply. Don had been talking in his half-sleep. "Well that's good, because we're booked for just that."

"What the hell?

Kraftpark’s L.H. Opus

 Three weeks later, Florian and Ralf were unpacking keyboards out of the van in Seattle, Washington, when Klaus and the doorman Henry from the nights venue The Comet came up suddenly and, breathing heavily, and in a comically fast delivery, Henry almost shouted:

“Robotrobic is gonna be two hours late! You guys are opening now! Sherry says you can play an extra 45 minutes and she’ll throw in an extra $50.  You guys need to get set up and started in twenty, okay? Sorry for the rush but hey that’s showbiz, am I right?” And off strolled Henry.

Ralf looked perturbedly over at Florian.

     “Well this is just bloody brilliant.  Who is the closing act!? Why can’t they pick up the slack?  Fucking Robotrobic.  Those guys always show up late. Their lead singer guy Terry is always a mess.”

Florian shouldered two Moog roadcases and shrugged, wondering what extra songs he’d be able to pull off, and said,

“The closer is that new smash bomb group, The Silver Bugs or whatever.  They’re flying in from their poorly attended show in Leeds and are most likely also running late. We should probably play the L.H. Opus, guys, if we want to make an extra 45 minutes up—”  

  “-wuh- L.H.? But we haven’t played that- shit, even rehearsed that song in- like, six months, Flor.  I’ll have to run through it a couple times! Do we get a sound check? This is fucked!”

Florian drowned out Ralf’s voice by humming the intro notes of Rocket Calculator, trying to center himself and not absorb Ralf’s predictable preshow tension, made worse this time by this set sequence curveball.  Klaus and their temporary sit in drummer Chuck Biscuits were more chill than Ralf typically, which Florian was thankful for.   It was difficult to always be the only one with a cool head.  

Just then, in walked Nik Turner and Dave Brock, who had just the day before, finally been allowed back into the U. S. after being banned for marijuana possession decades ago.

He looked at Nik and winked.

“We took a wrong step years ago,” said Nik.

- Paris -

What Don lacked in musical skill - and that was quite a lot - he made up for in knowledge of and adoration for obscure musical acts from the eighties to the teens. Somehow this earned his bandmates' respect, and so, pulled in the muddy wake of his ideas and taste, the band stumbled from failure to failure among the public, gaining a cult following all the while. They would go on to be one of the most influential bands of their 1990s, not that it would be of any real benefit to them by that point. As it was, this feral band of one odd stranger and four British expats - all coincidentally Liverpudlians - earned some pfennigs and a few easy marks in  smelly clubs by the Elbe and dreamed of better days, occasionally saving up to ride out to a few dates away along with their manager Jens.

"Are you sure we can afford this?" John asked Paul nervously; Paul just glanced at Jens, who glanced at his watch to avoid looking Paul in the eye. "We'll earn an audience…" was all he could offer. The Flat Five - nicknamed for the main characteristic of Don's intriguingly awful performances - laid off of Jens, and a few more hours passed by until their arrival jolted them from half-slumber.
With no budget for roadies, the boys were condemned to lugging their gear into the not-yet-famous Bus Palladium on their own. By the time they were done, they were ready to relax until well after the end of the opener, if only they could.
Just then Pierre Ducreux, the club manager, rushed up to them, bellowing "Get off your asses!! We don't have all night boys! What the hell?" Jens had the unenviable task of both interpreting for his band and negotiating too… "I'm sorry sir, but as far as I know, we have plenty of time until after the opener-"

The manager scoffed. "After the opener?! YOU as the main act?! Ha! Count yourself lucky to be here at all, the other band cancelled… you idiots, how could you not understand?!" Jens had to admit to himself that his French had gotten rusty lately, but wouldn't admit it to Pierre. "Well. We'll play." George shot daggers at him. "We'll. Play," he repeated firmly. The bedraggled Silver Beetles lumbered onto the stage in front of the already gathering crowd and waited for Don's cue as to which to start with. After a bit of consideration, he chose their rowdy rock and rolling take on Negativland's "Christianity is Stupid." "The loudspeaker spoke up and said! The loud-speaker spoke up, and said!" half-crooned half-shouted John and Paul in raucous harmony, piquing the interest of the crowd.

Pizza Folded in Half

 Swenayne finished with a porn worthy orgasm, squirting juice up in the air as she quivered and convulsed, her eyes rolling back showing only the whites and her mouth hanging half open, her tongue hanging out, while Don, wishing he would pass out again, astrally projected himself into The Dakota Hotel, where in his flat John Lennon was eating a piece of pizza, jokingly arguing with Yoko that the proper way to eat a piece of New York pizza was folded in half.  Yoko looked up from her Nori roll and scoffed at him.  The walls melted.

    Suddenly Don was back at the Strawberry Festival.  He mistakenly thought, anyway.  He had actually somehow traveled to the original ‘strawberry fields forever’ of John Lennon’s youth.  He found himself in a field of strawberries on the outskirts of Liverpool, England. It was 1949. 

   Meanwhile, Sweeney had finished his meeting, had returned to the tractor, and was asking the half dressed Swenayne where the man had disappeared to.  

Swenayne buttoned up her blouse and pulled her bloomers up a little more, embarrassed.

    “Uh… I-“

    “Swen, honey, I don’t care that you’re a bloody nympho but can you please abide by my rules and the man’s security protocols!  We don’t know where that guy could possibly have gone by now!!!  Now you tell me EVERYthing you two have done and where you’ve gone to since I left. IN DETAIL

By the time Sweeney worked out that The Dakota was near enough to project to from Times Square, and his navicomputers algorithms could find the Lennonian thread connected to strawberries and the field in 1949, Donald R. Parzick had already formed a band called The Silver Beetles with his pals John and Paul and George and Ringo, and was playing electric piano for five hours a night in Hamburg, Germany.

New York -

 A few sweet scenes of honestly horrifying sexual assault upon the unconscious Don later…

"Wait, 'sweet' scenes?! Oh m - Oh my fucking God!" Don screamed as the scent of his ejaculate registered in his mind as the odor of Hi-C he still faintly recalled from his youth.

Another thought struck him despite the shock - "If I'm here only with my senses, how are you doing this at all?"

"Who says your senses are in just one place? They're not, dummy," his rapist replied, ripping him back like a taffy snap solely onto the tractor, where she was grinding up for another round. Don, woozy, struggled poorly out of her grip but finally slipped down onto the dirt, and it hurt but he didn't pass out. The girl laughed out loud and spouted more abuse - "You loser, you deserve an abuser, stealing Dad's tractor, you're a dishonest actor" - and then before she could retract her words, they lay both sprawled out on Times Square.
"Are we *there* there or still at the fair, or maybe here or I don't know, everywhere?"
"Shut up," the girl replied. "Damn cheapskate never taking this goddamn thing in for maintenance, I told him this would start happening, but nooo, Mr. Nickel and Dime Daddy just had to save an ounce of taffy…"
"Are. We. Naked. On. Times. Square?!"
"Eh, don't worry nobody can see us. I think," she replied, worryingly unworried. Still, she zipped back up. Seeing Don gawking she mumbled, "just more comfortable this way," then waveringly put out a hand. "Swenayne."

Don, disgusted, did not return the gesture, but still coldly answered, "Don." A working-class middle-aged couple brushed through him, apparently on their way to a matinee showing of Enter the Dragon.

Strawberry Hotcake

 Don acknowledged that the drugs were peaking when, at the top of the Ferris Wheel, he looked over and realized that Strawberry Shortcake was trying to give him a blowjob.  It was the 1980’s toy in real woman form, and his jimmy just wasn’t having it, so laden with whatever the dwarf had dosed him with that he probably wouldn’t get a hard on for several more hours.  

“Hawk! Thwap!” She spit on his dick and sucked it again but to no avail.  

“What is WRONG with you?  God normally guys are so hot by now! Ugh!!” Strawberry groaned.  She gave up and he felt himself mumbling a slurred apology and putting his jimmy back in his Y fronts.  

“Where’s Rumple?” He croaked, gazing down from the ride in horror.  He’d always despised Ferris wheels, ever since the first time his Pa had taken him on one as a wee lad, telling him all about how our great grand uncle such and such had invented the great wheel for the 1893 Colombian Exposition, and how proud he ought to feel at the top when the wheel stopped, and they could look out, son and father, over the fairgrounds.  

    “Who the hell is Rumple?  God, you’re odd!” Said Strawberry Shortcake.  Don suddenly sobered up just enough to realize that it was a normal young lady in a costume.  He felt only slightly less flipped out.

    “The dwarf I was with…how did I get on this ride?!”

    “Sweeney?  Where’d you get ‘Rumple’?  Sweeney sent you with me to keep you safe while he goes and talks to the man!  We have to see what to do with you…or to you.”

    Don shuddered, looking around for escape routes.  His legs felt like wet noodles as he tried to stand, only realizing he was still in the car of the Ferris Wheel when his sudden movement began to flip it over.  The gal grabbed his belt from the back, pulling him back down in the seat.

    “Relax, Donnie!” said Strawberry, stroking his crotch impatiently.  We’ll be stuck up here for another ten minutes, Sweeney had the carny fix it so I could get my rocks off! You gonna fuck me, mister?”

“Drugged…” was all Don could muster and then he, once again, passed out.

Story I.

Nausea - as much like carsickness as anything - washed over Don as his reality stabilized. As it faded away, the gnome's mutterings faded into audibility, then comprehensibility. "…Mufthalp leaving me to fill the gas tank again… no-good, low-life, inconsiderate!… And I'll catch the heat for this substitute fuel…"
Don wondered why the fellow's speech suddenly sounded so much tamer, until he realized he'd absent-mindedly pulled off some of the taffy and started chewing on it a minute ago. "Makes as much sense as anything, I guess," he sighed.

He was too distracted to stop Rumple (as he'd named the gnome) from popping something into his mouth, followed by a swig of a drink he found even more cloying than Mountain Dew to wash it down - bizarrely, it didn't set him coughing, so down the pill went.

"Don't think you're going anywhere far, thief. That'll blink you back once I'm tanked up."
Rumple removed Don's blindfold to reveal strawberry fields stretching nearly out of sight in all directions but one, where the sign above a gate read "FULTON'S FARMS".

"You've got about two hours," Rumple continued. "Well, we've got… Seems there's a festival going on. I'd like to watch a little. You can come with if you hold on to me. Or just sit here."
Just sitting there did not sound attractive at all, so Don grabbed Rumple's shoulder. His senses immediately capriciously leapt from his body to float, then fly towards the river, then into a nearby city, sailing down the levy past banners celebrating the American bicentennial, then slowing down as the crowds thickened and started rudely passing right through him on their ways to the face-painting and cotton-candy stands. Another sign - "TROY STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL" this time. The muggy air left him happy to have left his armpits miles away, while the sharp sun had no such bright side.

Dimone Z-68B Multi-Dimensional Super Tractor

 The next thing Don knew, a cane was rushing toward his face, and then he saw no more.  

     He awoke several minutes later strapped to a chair with a gag in his mouth.  The chair was stuck onto the tractor by pieces of taffy, facing the rear, and the tractor was chuffing along at a merry gait.  He was blindfolded but he could hear the dwarf muttering as he drove the contraption.

“Frenchin’ uplanders messin’ wit me rig, wot biz they gone’ get from bossman how I hope he ain’t sore wit me man, da guy saw too much what was I supposed to do just let him walk away!?  He saw my rig! Couldn’t have him blabbing all about how he’s seen a dimension hopping time traveling tractor!  Got to protect my Dimone Z-68B!! Gaddamn uplanders…”

Just then something happened which actually horrified Don. (Up to this point, he had only been alarmed)

The Dimone Z-68B Supertractor either time or dimension hopped.  Imagine your stereotypical quantum tunnel, then dip it in acid and put it under your tongue.

& Artificially Flavored

Don had never seen a stranger tractor more strangely misplaced than the one parked right up there against Boiler #6 in the room - technically a spacious multi-boiler facility plant. The only way anyone could have gotten it down there was be disassembling it and then reassembling it after getting it through the door -- which is exactly how Don planned to move it out. And that wasn't even the weirdest part. It was covered in sour candy. Rings, pretzels, worms, you name it, apparently hand-stuffed into every crevice where it would fit. "Seems about a week old," thought Don. "Creepy. Not... dangerous. Gross though?"

He wasn't a farmer but he knew farmers. Either he could sell this or barter it. "Can't trust it to start, who knows if the engine's gummed up... Literally!" He'd just clambered back up the stairs and was mulling over the logistics when the dwarf (achondroplasiac type) approached in a huff.

"Don't you even think of stealing my tractor!"

Don Ferris finds Something

 Don Ferris was a janitor.  He had always thought he was going to be the next big rock singing sensation, but he spent a large amount of his life cleaning up garbage and moving heavy things for people.  Sacrifices are a normal part of being a parent.  And Don was a proud father to two sons, Jack and Harry. They had moved away to college but he still saw them on breaks and kept their rooms clean.  He told them both that if they ever got destitute or in trouble AT ALL to come home and stay with him. His own Dad had kicked him out and told him to ‘sink or swim’ when he’d been 19.  He had tried to be a better father to his sons.  

     It was the end of the school year at Kalamata College, and once again the entitled and mostly well off students were busy throwing away mounds and mounds of perfectly good food, clothing, and a variety of household items that had no defects other than simply being things kid didn’t feel like packing or worrying over any further.  Don had shamelessly harvested whatever useful things he could find.   He’d found all sorts of goodies including a portable record player, a bunch of Halloween decorations, and a full size foose ball table. 

One day Don found something very strange in the old boiler room of Drake Hall.  That day would change the course of his life, though he wouldn’t know that for a few days.

Introduction &

 Years spent without writing on here. Not sure what it was… not wanting to give energy to anything big enough to displace my addiction, distract me from my false goals? A damn shame, whenever I've been in the zone of writing a Joe story, no matter how cringeworthy, it's felt good.

I spent years with no tomorrows, or at best tomorrow as Lou Reed's "just another day." Never brushing my teeth, never stopping smoking until it happily did become just too much, never learning any new skills. All had to be sacrificed before the fire. And the fire had to burn because there was no tomorrow. Round and round it goes.

But there is another side. ADHD sucks, both acutely and chronically. So does depression. Helping with the acute helps with the chronic. Therapy helps. Good therapy is fucking expensive even in quote Eastern Europe unquote, but it helps. For years I couldn't get over the hump of contacting a neurologist to set up meds. Fear. Anxiety. Lack of faith. Amazingly she got me fired up and past that. Atomoxetine, slowly ramped up to 100mg. (Fuck amphetamines; coffee, sugar, booze, nicotine, games, masturbation, and dope and whatever else I'm forgetting have been quite enough addictions of various forms and degrees over the years for me.) It slows down the whirlwind. I'm not magically cured of it all but that's not the point.

Poverty helps. Having no choice helps. I mean, there's always a choice. You can fall out onto the street and die. Then I guess there's no choice. But while you're alive there's a choice. One marriage counselor we had liked to say, "The only thing you HAVE to do is die." (It sounds milder in Czech.) But realistically and with the assumed condition of "in order to not suffer the unbearable," yeah no, sometimes you have no choice.

Stumbling along all these decades I never really trained any skills except customer service, which nobody values, and translation, of which suddenly nobody now accepts the value. Sucks to be me. Editing is still valued, ish. Nothing is really valued in the freelance world unless you know how to sell yourself. Har dee har, yeah, no, fuck you. Anyway, I don't. Also I feel like I'm too old to pick up new salable skills in time. I'm scared. But it's not like not doing Joe is gonna help.

Three years without any Joe is pretty sad. Yeah, let's get back to it.