Intergalactic

Australia, the sixty-five year-old hitman-looking hippy-engineer dude from Australia that we used to ride the train with before he retired to his homeland, used to say that I was "Intergalactic" 'cause I knew more about all sorts of different cultures around the world than he did, even though he was a world-travelling-guy from a family of world-travelling-guys with kids in like seven different countries all around the world.

Stuff like which hand yer supposed to use when you take food out of the communal bowl, which is why they chop that hand off when you get caught doing something against the community.

He loved to try to trip me and Ex-bouncer up with junk like that, cultural customs and stuff from history, but Ex-bouncer is good at that shit too, and I loved it when I could get him to explain stuff to me that I didn't know, y'know, like the history of Australia and what its like to grow up there from a guy who actually grew up there insteada hearing cutesy little soundbits from some idiot who is trying to sell me something on TV.

I'm not some kinda Daniel Jackson scientist or anything, although that'd be cool as hell, I'm just naturally the way I am, 'cause I grew up here in the middle of America, and I'm just one of the fifty-seven flavors in the melting pot, y'know.

My first best friend in kindergarten was the only black kid, Tony the Tiger.

Just like I was the only white kid.

We were friends 'cause we liked all the same junk, y'know, comic books and TV shows and stuff, and nobody could run as fast as us.

My second best friend was Yung Min Kim, a chinese kid who tried to teach me and Tony to be gentlemen, y'know, 'cause Yung Min Kim was all class, you had to take your shoes off when you went to his house heh.

He showed us how to write our family names in chinese and told us to hang them on our front door for good luck, my mom fucking loved that kid, he was always making us look bad ahaha.

My third best friend was a spanish-speaking kid named Alexander Za-ha-ro-polis (dunno how he spelled it, but that's how you say it heh), and he was the opposite of Yung Min Kim, he was a fast-talking wise-cracking jokester that was way better with words than the rest of us (I was the big dumb kid who hardly ever said anything back in those days).

My fourth best friend was a japanese kid that had the coolest robot toys in the universe, so we always used to go over to his house and he taught us to read Spectreman magazines backwards and shit while he worried about us breaking something expensive heh.

And the list goes on, and on, Russian Jewish Comedians, Mexican Cowgirls, Hindu Princesses, Red-headed Irish Fireballs, Con Artists from New Zealand, Italian Bicycle Gangs, Polish Science Fiction Writers, South African Poets, Arabian Nightclub Experts, the Phillipine kid that could sing better than everybody else and drink his body-weight in beer.

Nerds, weirdos, cool kids, toughguys, artists, whatever, its all the same to me.

That's why I'm Intergalactic.

And I'm glad I'm Intergalactic, 'cause I sure as hell wouldn't want to be stuck eating the food where my body came from genetically.

Like Haggis and Pickled Beets and shit, fuck that shit, man, I thank the gods of my ancestors for helping me escape to a place where I can get me some Tamales and Egg Rolls ahaha.

And we got all fifty-seven flavors of beautiful women here, too, and that sure don't hurt us none, either.

So yah, I'm Intergalactic, but I ain't nothing special, everybody is pretty damn Intergalactic where I come from.

Its actually so rare to meet somebody who ain't Intergalactic that I usually don't even recognize it at first 'cause I ain't had enough experience with it.

I expect everybody to be Intergalactic.

But I know that's not how it is everywhere.

People get hurt, and I know that shit can hurt, I've seen how that shit works on me and my friends, and even when it don't exactly hurt, it just sorta wears you the fuck out for nothing.

And wounds never get a chance to heal in the dark little hidey-holes and basements all over the place where the wounded tend to retreat to and hide.

They just fester and get more poisonous and infectious down there.

But that shit can't survive for long out in the Intergalactic sunshine.

So crawl out of your holes, and come down off your hill-billy-ass mountain, and leave all your inverted-appreciation shit behind.

Nobody wants the stuff yer peddling, none of us needs to feel like we're anything special, the Aborigines sit around on logs and tell jokes and slap each other on the back and laugh their asses off just like we do.

But we do got kickass stuff like tamales and egg rolls and hot dogs and chocolates, russian comedians, toys from japan, music from everywhere, and fifty-seven flavors of beautiful women.

And its all for free.

You just gotta be Intergalactic to enjoy it.