Peter H. Cropes

Living out West has infected me. I am a slave of the advertisements and the shameless style of spending money. I have a good car, yet I want a separate car, of a different shape, for those times when I feel a different way about myself. I even want a third car, of a third shape, for a time in my future, that I should hope for, when I feel a third way about myself. And oh the colas. They are never content with their colas. They add cherry, and vanilla, and then coffee flavor, and they take away the sugar, like a magician pulling away the tablecloth, and change the logo artwork, and keep you ever dancing, dancing, like a madman on a red-hot conveyor belt to hell; if you don't dance in place and always buy more strange new soda then you'll fall on your side and be whisked off to the scalding white-hot pits of brimstone and sulphur. That is what it is like to get out of bed each day in California.