

The egg needed a name. Naturally, it came down to a choice between the two Bob and Fred. Now, since I know from a reliable source that God's real name is Bob, I had to go with Fred. And spurred on by another friend's phone call asking me of Fred's welfare, I decided that he and I needed to spend some time on the road together.

See the Grand Canyon in the background? Well, of course you can't. There's a bunch of smoke in the damned thing. Fred started a fire the night before, just east of the Canyon dancing under the moon with a bunch of his bad-religion friends. Not pagans. Not wiccans. Not the musical group. Bad-religion types that figure the best way to worship themselves (not even some deity) is to smoke cigars, drink lots of Jack, get naked and swear horrible things under the moon, start small fires in the woods and piss on them to put them out. Seems they let one fire get out of hand, even with all of them lined up taking a leak on it.
Fred comes staggering into the motel room around three in the morning, smelling of wood-smoke. I ask, "What's up?" and he tells me, "About 300 acres, up in smoke right about now."