Ok. JohnnyM posted a video---on Jan 8th---entitled "When the World Falls Apart". (Nice holiday fare, lol.) He felt bad that it was so dark. Now: We ALL post dark stuff! It's part of being an artist! And just to show Johnny 'solidarity', I decided to make a short text based on his video. His video shows a meteor shower pelting the earth, then a guy jumps into his car and races away, past burning houses, etc. (It's cinematic---but everything he does is cinematic!) I don't have the link---I'm too lazy to find it---but it's in JohnnyM's gallery, and on Jan 8 of this year. Here's my improvised text version. I tried to capture in words what he showed via image & sound. Every writer's dream is to capture something difficult: Hope it doesn't cause ulcers. (It ends silly at least...hope J's my friend after this!) Thanks for your visits, everyone. Have a good Monday! (ps: I left out the image when I posted: Here it is, w/ the original slightly-edited text...) ------------------ ...everywhere, everywhere, fire-balls...huge fiery globs of god-knows-what, chunks of rock and metal seething with blinding lights and searing heat (you couldn't breathe it was so searing!), shooting from the sky with a veangance so fierce, I thought it would kill everything. Crash! Splash! Their sounds were like roaring bees, the size of boulders, roaring by, uttering mean gutteral moans like the bombs of WWII, their moans getting lower and lower until the meteors hit the ground with a terrifying crash, sending fire and debris flying everywhere. I looked for a meteor---a real meteor, not these ugly shards but something huge, the size of a house, anything; as if, were I to find one, I could scream "STOP!" to it, and convince it to stop this hellish bombardment of everything in sight. But then: Why was I doing this in the first place---gazing up, when I should be hiding under the heaviest boulder in signt? Looking up was near-suicide: But I saw nothing: The sky was so deluged with flying hell, I covered my eyes and ran away. The meteors must've broken up, way up high, and dissolved into countless deadly projectiles; and they were so sharp, if they grazed you---just grazed you---you'd be killed in an instant. Whoosh! Whoosh! I ran, ducking wildly; and I don't know why, as nothing you did could stop these damned things: I was just praying that I'd be spared: "SPARE me!" I shouted as if anyone were listening: "STOP!!!" Whoosh! I saw the car---I didn't even know I was near the car---I ran to it, yanked the door open, leapt into the sear---the pelting of the meteors causing such a din against the chassis, I thought I'd go deaf. Then I slammed the car-door, put in the key, and, omg: It started! Can you believe it? The car started! I couldn't believe my ears! "THANK you!" I cried (as if it could hear me); and I slammed on the gas pedal---I mean I pushed that thing into the floor, dammit---and zoomed outa there as fast as I'd ever gone in my life: Whoosh! This time, it was me who was whooshing, not the meteors. Gahhhd. I took off... ...do you know what it's like to zoom down a highway with no cars in sight, no humans in sight, just empty bombarded road? Yet, at every turn, you see rows of houses and farms and trees and cars---on and on---on fire? A Biblical hellscape everywhere. Was anyone in these houses? DId anyone get out? Was I the only human left? And the sky would clear in spots, mind you, and you'd think: "Is it over? Is it OVER?" And then: Whoosh! The showers began again (omg)...and as I raced past all this, I thought, I'm driving so fast and carelessly, one little slip and I'll careen off the highway and be annihilated...I screamed: "Wherever I'm headed, wherever there is peace, let me get there alive!" But death awaited me at every turn. "No!" I shouted: I shoved the pedal onto the floor, nearly pushing it through the floor, and muttered: "Let me get out of this, please"---when there was a sudden mass explosion, fire burst out everywhere, the heat overwhelmed me, I felt my brain dissolve, and--------- I woke up! What happened? I sat up straight, my heart pounding like wildfire; and, wildly catching my breath, I looked in front of me: I'd fallen asleep at my computer! What the hell! What caused this to happen? I looked at the computer: It was an upload from JohnnyM! Really? An upload??? That's what caused this??? I perused J's video a second time: God, THAT'S what caused this! (I was a wreck.) "DO NOT FALL ASLEEP TO A DISASTER VIDEO," I thought. And I made a note to Johnny: "You're too damned good, sir: Next time, make something with Henny Youngman in it, or Bill Hader, Don Rickles or Bozo the freakin' Clown! I nearly flew out the window from your video!" (He's too damned good, that's all, just too damned good...) After catching my breath, I walked outside. Shit: Another meteor shower was bombarding the earth! "Another one?" I cried: "You cant be serious! All from a video??? Calm down," I cried to the people racing past me: "It's just crazy-Johnny messing around. (To myself:) That's one powerful video..." I brushed off a flying star, kicked a meteor out of the way---"you don't scare me, you little----"---and, straightening myself out, I uploaded this piece, kicked away a shard, and walked home... ---------------