Ah, yes, hello there world. I didn’t forget about you – quite the opposite to be honest.
It has truly been a teaching year; I drank from the firehose.
We’ve got just under a week until 2021 as I write this – with any luck (and a bit of focus) – I’ll have a nice long entry that will more than makeup for my lack of content.
As a teaser, I’ll say the first half of 2020 went fairly slow and steady. Then I learned what can happen to a person when someone close to them with a victim complex starts to villainize them behind their back.
Of course, all of this will be fiction using complete made up names and situations, because in my fiction one actor is written as being of the litigious sort.
No way it will model anything happening in my life.
Dateline: 1980s. Sometime after the Soviet
false nuclear alarm incident but before 21 Jump Street came out. Most probable
date and time: After ALF started, but before it jumped the shark and started
phoning it in.
The place: Unknown, though based on behavioral
analysis its assumed to be the United States, Southeast region – most logical
location: Florida.
The person: Unknown. A technically minded person, recent drop out of a local Community College. Last known degree pursued: organic chemistry Last Courses Taken: Organic Chemistry 101 and Inorganic Chemistry 101. Note: Those are the entire library of chemistry courses at the Community College our subject went to.
The bio for the person of interest is most likely apocryphal, but data suggests a correlation with similar individuals who made the same breakthrough for other compounds. The person of interest has addiction issues, their net worth is currently somewhere between a toddler’s sock filled with Kennedy Half Dollar coins minted back when they were mostly pure silver and a boot of alien moonshine. They won’t stop picking at their face.
Their list of
earthly possessions is so short all of them will be itemized below:
1 – 1978 Volkswagen Scirocco. Nonrunning because someone stole the float bowl for the carburetor. (I know, who does that? Really?).
1 – Cardboard box, medium in size, containing an assortment of glassware made from borosilicate glass – an extremely robust and heavy material typically found in industrial reagent bottles.
1 – Cardboard box, large in size. Contents: A variety of chemicals compounds. A majority of them are common chemicals carried by hardware stores. Over a dozen boxes of store brand anti decongestant, (active ingredient:ephedrine). A quick glance shows what appears to be containers of anhydrous ammonia, paint thinner, drain cleaner, Freon, acetone and several things our agent didn’t catch the names of.
The trunk of the vehicle contains common kitchen implements; timers, hot plates, mixers, a set of bowls usually used to melt chocolate and other assorted things.
Field Observation: Subject and his vehicle had a miasma about them that can only be described as “chemical smells”.
At first glance it looks like the markings of a substandard, though useable, setup for the synthesis of Crystal Methamphetamine. Only a couple things of note: 2 compounds sold in most industrial chemical suppliers. These are quite expensive, especially for how they are used, and are needed in quantities of such a large and specific amount that any individuals buying them are added to a half dozen lists.
Also found: 120 pounds of red phosphorous. Reported stolen in a casual manner by a local farmer, who told the sheriff he thought he was getting a great deal on fertilizer but what showed up “ain’t worth shit. But if you find the guy, shoot him anyway.”
After Season 2, Episode 1 of ALF came out, our hero was so disgusted by how those Hollywood freaks could take such a solid premise, one that guaranteed a shower of awards and money, of an Alien that eats cats and somehow screwed it all up that he had one of those moments of alacrity (In the 80s, that word was actually spelled and pronounced Alfacrity – such was the hypnotic hold that the alien Gordon Shumway of the planet Memac had over the world) or methguity as it was called by a few tweakers for a couple of weeks until Macgyver came out, and ever since then research has turned to finding the best tongue in cheek reference involving methamphetamine and Macgyver.
For some reason, of our protagonist’s pursuit of knowledge – hoping to graduate in a degree of whatever you get when you sign up for classes by picking ones that the chicks with the biggest tits are in and lasting for almost 5 months – over 5 times his average employment, and 3 times longer than his longest relationship. 3 months later, he remembers nothing of that time, except a single moment in time; when this smoking hot chubby redheaded alcoholic with boundary issues, no underwear, and a latex fetish got in line with the light from the one clean window in Chemistry 101 – the halo of sleaze that was formed caused an embolism of invention to come to our intrepid hero.
In 2006, this phenomenon was studied for 2 years. It appears to be the only true super power that humans can possess, and only after chronic use of meth. This super power, called The Mighty Angus – a reference to MacGyver, the lead character in a show of the same name – allowed a breakthrough to occur in the production of methamphetamine. It removed 2 expensive, Federally watched chemicals and their associated processes which were volatile, complex, and requiring stringent adherence to its processing to create a viable compound – and replaced it with a fertilizer that is in abundance, and extremely affordable due to it having only a few known uses and created naturally as a byproduct of more useful versions.
The entire process to make one of the most potent stimulants ever known, the stimulant that flowed through the beating heart and gave rise to the Third Reich in the 1940s, one that starts with a magic key that passes through the blood-brain barrier like it was made of wet toilet paper, is now condensed to a 3×5 inch recipe card. The original procedure written on the back of “Grandma’s Best Damn Chocolate chip cookies”
Note: After a thorough analysis and taste testing by the boys back in the lab, it’s been determined that that “Grandma’s Best Damn Chocolate chip cookies” recipe is a lie. Grandma merely plagiarized said recipe from the most popular cookbook of the 1980s:
The Silver Palate Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julee Russo, 1982
Story Continues: The meth newswire went wild with the news and talks of the Methbel Prize being awarded to this brave pioneer.
Location: Washington DC, The White House Date: A day or whatever after the news. (I won’t always be here to conveniently advance the plot for you so you don’t have to hurt your brain by using your imagination)
Nancy Reagan has just woken up and, as she does every day, starts her morning with a shot and reads the Methnewswire – her traditional morning routine for decades by this time.
The recent breakthrough, heralded as the answer to everybody’s prayers, sends a shiver down her spine as she realizes what it all means: now everyone has access to this magic, and now it’s so affordable scales were no longer being used – the typical measuring device being a shovel.
5 minutes later, an orange-red phone rings for the first time ever. She answers, with trepidation. Her masters, Shire Pharmaceuticals – the seat of true governmental power in the US – and asks if she read the news. An intense discussion ensues.
After taking a nice decade long break, I think it’s about time I start writing again. And since some jackasses in the Ukraine decided to snag my old domains when they went open for a day, well here I am now. The Pavleck Army.
