Pearl River Monster

EXCLUSIVE! CAPTURED ON FILM: PEARL RIVER MONSTER

I could - and sometimes do - go on at nauseating length about the wonders of nature. Nature has wasps that are basically sci-fi horror monsters, molecules that will eat your brain, intelligent mold, talking apes, prehistoric oddities at the bottom of the sea - and that's just on Earth. 

But say that perhaps the truth was not interesting enough for your tastes? Say you wanted a little extra icing on that infinitely large and delicious cake? Well in that case you'd be interested the frayed flier that washed up on the shores of Belhaven Beach:

Consider a career in the exciting world of cryptozoology!

Dear Readers - I have. What you see above is the culmination of my hunt. The hunt for Big Muddy - the Pearl River Cryptobionoid.

Big Muddy: Totes Exists, You Guys

I mean, I got a picture. That's good enough, right? Shouldn't the Discovery Channel be down here with some big beards and cameras? I've even got the beard, Discovery Channel - in case you're looking.

It's not like a news agency would push a story with less than a picture, is it? What? Just some dudes talking? That's all it takes?

Now, it's not just any random yahoo who saw this unlikely creature. Nope, it's Paranormal Investigators - aka "unicorn hunters." They have a very easy job, because what they're looking for can be conjured up with a bit of imagination, and the desire to not look into things very hard. You may recognize this as the exact opposite of investigation, unless you're a policeman investigating internal misconduct or really rich people. Then, you might have a cushy position here in Mississippi waiting for you when you retire!

So, back to my cryptobionoid. Or cryptid? Seriously? Cryptid? That's lame. I think I'm going to stick with cryptobionoid.

My cryptobionoid (pictured above) is "Big Muddy." In order to prove he exists, I am going to use the same airtight logic these crack investigators employ. There's only two non-crytobionoid things that could make that image: A giant anthropomorphic catfish, or a boat. It's clearly not a boat, so therefore it's Big Muddy.

It's better evidence for Big Muddy than our Vicksburg Swamp-Ape evidence which consists of what can only be a bear or some sort of human-like ape. It's not a bear, so... bigfoot.

Call me back when people don't have feet anymore.

The Story of the Truck

Still more useful than advice from strangers on the internet.

The truck's been where it is for a long while, now. I've never been able to get to it from the Flowood side of the river. I rarely visit there. As far as I know, the east side of the river is full of dangerous cannibals, alligators the size of tractor-trailers, and ancient jungle-eaten ziggurats, temples to a fallen god.

I should head over there sometime.

I'm sure there's a story about how it got there. I'd love to find out the truth one day. If you're a reader and know the story of "the truck," use the comments and I will make an exception to my usual "no comments" rule, illegitimi non carborundum.

So, here's my story. The story of The Truck.

THE STORY OF THE TRUCK

by FPJEROME

2001

"I'm getting too old for this shit." Barry said. The truck was bouncing on groaning axles, shooting gravel with every rhythmic push.

"You always say that. You're only 25. You're not old." John said. They were high in the air on the creosote-stained railroad trellis, the thin branches of the trees they were even with were a blur out the window.

The blur was stained red and blue, swathes of bright light that flickered like hyperkinetic lighthouses, giving the forest a neon undergrowth.

"Our love is illegal, Barry." John said as Barry kept the old truck from sliding on the loose gravel. He was struggling to keep the wheels straddling the steel rails without crashing through the flimsy wooden railing.

"But not unconstitutional! Not here! Not like in Hawaii, John!" Barry shouted. He held out his hand.

"This is a standard." John said, not taking Barry's hand.

"Well I'm not doing that Thelma and Louise shit! We're almost out of Jackson!" Barry said, putting his hand back down. The railroad trellis was looming in the moonlight. The cop that was chasing them was crazed, eyes alight behind his aviator frames, envisioning their 10 year jail sentence for their love.

The truck almost lost control, swerved as the rails rose to reach the rusting red steel stretch. Below, the Pearl flowed deep, brown water black in the night.

Behind them, Offizier Tod Buzz slammed on the brakes, his tires spat gravel. No matter how badly he wanted to burst two men for what John and Barry had done, he wasn't about to follow them out onto a death trap.

The tires hit the rails, there was a bark of rubber, a shriek of steel. The truck spun, the passenger side crumpled as it struck the huge rusted span. The whole bridge roared, then there was a moment of quiet, squealing metal.

Officer Buzz did something he rarely did. He took off his sunglasses. He pressed down the sides of his mustache. Ahead, the truck was hanging half off the bridge.

But Officer Tod Buzz was an optimist. That truck was half ON the bridge.  He ran towards them. Godless sodomites or not, Buzz would be damned if they died on his watch. He ran, boots pounding the crossties, and jumped onto the rear of the groaning truck. His weight kept it from pitching forward into the river.

"Come on!" He shouted, hand out towards John in an authoritarian parody of the grasp he had just refused his lover.

John did not refuse this one. Buzz jerked him clear, then threw open the door. Barry was there, a smudge of blood on his forehead. He was woozy, confused.

"Come with me if you want to live." Buzz said, leather-bound hand stretching towards him, reaching.

"I won't go to jail for this." Barry said, crying.

"We're in Flowood. I can't arrest you here. I may be a loose cannon, but I'm a damn fine cop."

"Fuck yeah." John said, grabbing Buzz by the belt as the truck began to slowly lurch over the edge.

There was a momentary rush of airborne cans - Old English, Busch, something called Stroh's, that had been rolling around in the seat of the car for years. The truck gave half a spin and splashed into the dark water, huge bubbles roaring up from the whorls of water as it vanished.

Buzz was hanging halfway off the bridge, Barry dangling in the air, John holding on to the policeman's belt. The three swayed for a moment, flexed, everyone pulled back before laying there on the tracks, panting.

"I'm sure we'll get that truck out of the river soon enough." Buzz said. "Now you two best get going before I have to arrest us all for too much man-love."

...and thus ends the story of the truck. Think it's ridiculous? You could point out how ridiculous this story is, and win some free trash!

Do you know what happened to the truck? Leave a comment!

Wonderful Local Coffee Shops - A Rundown

Local coffee shops have a certain appeal for having products that you can't find anywhere else. What Starbucks offers Red Dog and dead mussels? None of them. NONE OF THEM.

Apparently, people don't like washed out pictures of dead animals and washed-up litter taken by an unwashed lunatic, so in order to increase blog traffic I've decided to follow the lead of several popular blogs and review coffee places. Local coffee places. And shower, but I still can't figure out how that's going to come across on the blog.

Local coffee shops. To be honest, I don't like them. The coffee they serve leaves enamel on the teeth and is entirely nonflammable. They usually have a lot of racoons out in front, to clean up the litter.

You don't get racoons out front at Starbucks. That's why I don't go there, either. A good coffee place will have racoons out front, either to greet you, or clean up litter. They understand that at Cups. All the locations. Faithful racoons.

You cannot kill a man with a scone from Cups, not without chemical propellants, which they DO NOT SELL. Do NOT ask the man behind the counter for such a thing. The scones are not as hard and lethal as a proper, British scone. A proper scone has a hardness of almost 2 on the Mohs scale, right up there with gypsum, but while you can burn and break down gypsum to make Plaster of Paris, you cannot do that with a scone. Scones can form Plaster of London, but that's something not even racoons will eat.

Above: The source of most scones, also where Starbucks gets the water for coffee that will not under any circumstance remove paint. If it removed paint, I'd go there. Good coffee should be mostly lethal.

Now, for a good, lethal scone, you need to go Seattle Drip. Unfortunately, they're mostly up in Madison, where I'm wanted for a variety of crimes against taste. But, you can fire one of those scones through a brick wall.

Finally, there's Koinonia, a nice place you can go that's close to Town Creek, which easily puts it into the top tier of local coffee shops near gar-filled creeks that can back up without warning and flood wide swaths of the city.

This concludes my informative, if informal, review of Coffee Shops in Jackson.

If you have any comments or questions or corrections to make, please just throw them in the river.