The Final Showdown

I apologize for the delay in posting, gentle comrades, but it's difficult to find time to type while struggling to survive amidst the chaos of the streets. It surely is a jungle out there!

A lot has happened in the two weeks since we last communicated. As you know, I plotted the demise of two of my friends, Dingy Joe and Strychnine Sally, who at the present time share the misfortune of also being my mortal enemies. That plan did not go as smoothly as I anticipated, but everything has a funny way of working itself out in the end.

As I informed you in my last post, the idea was to have Joe "take over my lease" on the 15th and have Sally show up on the 16th. But ever being the horrid wench that she is, Sally forgot which day we had agreed upon amidst the clutter of LSD flashbacks that regularly swamp her neurotransmitters like fat kids at a Star Trek convention, and she showed up a day early. Just as I began walking away from the railcar fully satisfied that my plan was coming to fruition, my nostrils detected a stench with an all too familiar blend of urine, fecal matter, and dead horseshoe crabs that I recognized immediately as the calling card of Strychnine Sally. Curses!

Knowing full well that I had to face this dilemma before it festered and exploded like a zit on the face of one of those fat kids I was talking about earlier, I picked up an old railroad spike that I saw sticking out of the grass, tucked it securely in the waistline of me pantaloons, and turned to face a very agitated, and seriously drug-addled Sally, who was already pounding her firsts against the sliding metal door of the railcar.

Joe opened the door slowly to steal a peek at whomever it was causing the racket. He didn't bother to remove the needle from the inner crook of his elbow.

"What's goin' on out here?" he begged in a tired drawl that is a common characteristic of a man entangled in a heroin daze.

"Getty on outta my house, you!" Sally screamed. "Quint sold it to meh fair and square!"

Fully aware of the escalating tension, I decided to sneak around the car and allow them to fight it out, but just as I made my move, ole Dingy stumbled out of the car and spotted me.

"Hey Quint, what's she on about? Is this all true?"

"Quiiiiiiint!!!" Sally shrieked like a banshee, all the while hobbling in my general direction.

"Keep away from me ya brigands or I'll brain ye!" I shouted, unsheathing the railroad spike from me pants and slashing wildly in front of me.

There's one thing you should always keep in mind when dealing with deranged hobos, and that is that they wake up to death every morning and they smile. And rightly so! Why fear death when hell boasts a warmer climate than Philadelphia? Such is the logic of a hobo.

Sally was on me like that busty blonde was on Jerry Maquire in the film of the same name when she screams, "Don't ever stop fucking me!" Except Sally was screaming, "How dare you fuck me!" and instead of having intercourse with me, she was clawing at my eyes with her overgrown fingernails.

I began to wonder where exactly my plan had gone so wrong, when all of a sudden Sally landed a knee in my groin and I fell to the ground like a sack of retarded midgets in mid-coitus. My peripheral vision detected Joe standing off to the side, a sly grin on his face, and I recognized immediately what was happening. Joe decided to employ my logic by watching Sally and I kill each other off so that he could escape with nary a scratch on his person. We'll I'd have none of that!

As Sally jumped on my back and attempted to bite through my right shoulder, I regained my grip on the spike that had fallen on the ground at my feet, and swung it around hard and smacked her squarely on the face with the blunt side. She plunged to the ground in much the same fashion as I imagine that same sack of fornicating midgets would, only there would also be snakes and rats inside the sack, and the sack would be on fire...and one of the midgets would have SARS.

She appeared to be unconscious, but I decided to give her a swift and solid boot to the gut just to be sure. While not dead, Sally was definitely down for the count. Either that, or she's one hell of an actress, and if that's the case, the lump I had just administered to her forehead should be halting any auditions she might have in the near future.

Joe pulled a length of pipe out of his trench coat and whirled it about his head like a madman. I pounded my chest and charged at him like a bull with incredibly large testicles. We clashed like titans as we wrestled to the ground.

My attempt to drive the spike into his solar plexis was thwarted when he walloped me on the right arm with the pipe. A normal human being might have cried out in pain, but I bellowed a war cry the likes of which this world has not known since the days of Crazy Horse the wild Injun, and I jabbed fiercely at my assailant.

Joe attempted to ensnare me in a headlock, but as he did so, I jerked his arm behind his back and slammed his face into the dirt. That's when I realized that the needle still dangled from his vein like a turd too long to expell in one push. But a new detail had also grasped my attention. Joe had yet to shoot the hit!

Seizing the opportunity, I injected the drug into Dingy Joe's arm and waited for him to lapse into a heroin induced coma. I did not have to wait long. The reaction was immediate and powerfully effective. He no longer struggled against my grip, so I backed off in an effort to regain my composure.

Sally was still sprawled out in a heap not far away and Joe remained slumped on the ground in a vegetative state with a vacant expression on his face; one that I had seen many times before. In a way I was sad to leave. After all, these people were like family to me. Only they were slightly less abusive that me own.

Leaving Home Should Not Be a Moment of Sadness. It Should Be an Opportunity for Exacting Revenge

Hello again, dear friends. I feel that I am obligated to inform you that today is a day of change for ole Quint McGuinley. The time has come for me to move on from the abandoned railcar that has been my home for the greater part of a year now; my main reason being that the city will soon be shrouded in a blanket of humidity that I anticipate will cause the atmosphere inside the steel car to rise to oven-like temperatures.

Sure ole Quint wakes up with the sun and spends most of his days wandering around barefoot in air-conditioned supermarkets to avoid the ravages of such a climate, but that's not the point! The point is that I am a complex human being who requires frequent lifestyle changes in order to feel secure. That might not make sense to a lot of you, but I am not here to explain myself. I am here to chronicle the insanity that is my existence; not babysit simpletons!

Forgive me for that outburst. I just did fifty squat-thrusts in 20 seconds and a bead of perspiration found its way to my left eyeball. Argggh!! I could punch a hole through a man's pectorals when that happens!!

Before I go off on a tangent, I just want to let you know that the decision is final. I already drafted a blood contract with Dingy Joe that entitles him to 100% of my railcar property on the 15th of April, which is this Friday...tomorrow. What I neglected to inform him is that I also made an agreement with Strychnine Sally to move in on the 16th.

The way I see it, they'll fight like savages over the rights to my railcar and probably slaughter, or at the very least severely maim each other in the process, allowing me to slip away with no worries and no reparations to be made. And right around the time winter rolls around again the police should be removing the yellow restrictive tape from the perimeter of my railcar, providing me easy entry to my former quarters and a warm refuge from the frigid air.

And before you launch an attack on my personal integrity for hatching such a cruel design, please permit me a second to explain my position. Dingy Joe has yet to receive his comeuppance for accosting my belt. Sure, I bare-knuckle boxed the fella, but he could have at least told me he had the AIDS! The way I see it, that's TWO strikes against him! This is only ONE revenge scheme!

If Dingy survives Strychnine Sally's brutal onslaught, then I will forgive all previous wrongs...provided of course that he returns my belt in the same condition it was in when I last saw it. If he cannot, then God help him.

As for Sally, the only thing she ever did for me was give me a nasty case of the clap! That filthy harlot would do the same to me if only she thought of it first; and if she owned her own railcar, of course. To hell with the whole lot of 'em!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to packing my rucksack and leaving a healthy dump under the makeshift bed of grass. What kind of realtor would I be if I didn't leave a welcome gift for my tenant?

Recipe for Living a Long and Happy Life Despite a Lifestyle that Promotes Death and Suffering

It's Friday, me gentle friends, and ole Quint has learned a few things since his last posting. Firstly, it turns out that I do not have the AIDS after all. A thousand apologies for scaring you, but apparently my self-diagnosis was a tad premature and the cause of my sickness was merely a nasty case of the 24 hour flu.

While it is common knowledge that I have been known to jump the gun from time to time, it is not something I'm proud of. But then again, I wouldn't be a man if I confessed my feelings, so therefore I shall not. If you are looking for someone to pour his heart out to you, I believe Oprah is on every day in the afternoon.

Secondly, no one of sound mind should bare-knuckle box Dingy Joe, as he currently has the AIDS. As much as I wish this knowledge was available to me prior to our bout of fisticuffs the other day, I am confident that I am impervious to the immunodeficiency disorder and my mind is at ease. You wish to know my secret, don't you? Well, I'll never tell.

Fine! I'll impart my wisdom to you. After all, I'm a drunk and I won't get around to securing a patent for my technique anyway. It's really quite simple and it amazes me that scientists haven't discovered the cure themselves.

If you want to avoid the AIDS - especially if said AIDS was acquired during a recent confrontation with a homeless man named Dingy Joe - the best way to keep the virus from ravaging your T-cells like Ted Bundy at a sorority house is to bathe in turpentine for 3 hours and make sure to scrub the cuts extra good!

I told you it wasn't complicated. And if you follow that with a long night of imbibement and hookers and you can be sure that 6 months from now you will be lesion free! Take my word for it. If ole Quint managed to avoid the AIDS this long, there's no way in hell you'll get it.

Home...and the AIDS

Hello, my friends, enemies, and former/present lovers. I understand your surprise that ole Quint hath returned a living organism from his voyage to the Isle of Erin, but I assure you that my charter back to the states did not come without high cost.

When I began this online journal several months ago, I made a pact with myself to remain honest with my readers at all times, even if such honesty meant risking the loss of all respect I have accumulated thus far. Well, it is with great discomfort that I report to you that I may have acquired the AIDS whilst traveling abroad in Ireland.

Yes, it has been said. The AIDS. I can understand if you are disappointed in Ole Quint and I assure you that I will stop at nothing to gain back your trust. Believe me, I realize that you hold your friend Quint to a higher standard than most other human beings, and I strive to meet your expectations. But sometimes it's just so hard! After all, I am only one man!

But before you get all teary eyed and melancholy, allow me to assure you that the symptoms of AIDS are not quite as bad as I expected. Yes, I have been sneezing a lot and my urine smells like peanut brittle that has been left out in the woods long enough to welcome a mossy growth, and yes I threw up after a serious 2 day drinking binge for the first time in 30 years. But on the whole I am still the strong, energetic, barrel-chested sculpture of the gods that I have always been. And might I add that my sideburns still possess a brilliant youthful sheen that drives women completely out of their minds...and knickers! Hargh Hargh Hargh I'll never learn, eh?

Well, I have plenty of things to do today. I plan on doing 4,000 push-ups to spite my newly acquired virus. And then I have to bare-knuckle box Dingy Joe because he stole my favorite belt whilst I was abroad and I can think of no better way of exacting revenge than bleeding the AIDS all over him. A tad harsh perhaps, but I've always been an extremist.