Two Bags of Snakes
by Thrasymachus,Aug/26/2021
Me: Oh shit, dude, put that joint out and eat it - we're getting pulled over.
(my brother) Chris: Oh fuck, why?
Me: Probably my expired tags.
Chris: Damn... (eats half a hooter as I'm stopping)
Cop: License, registration and proof of insurance please, sir.
Me: (handing him my license) Officer, I'm not gonna lie to you; this piece of crap is unregistered and uninsured.
Cop: (shining flashlight in interior of piece of crap) What's in that bag.
Me: Snakes.
Cop: There are Snakes in that bag?
Me: Yes, exactly.
Cop: Why are there snakes in that bag?
Me: Well, me and my brother were driving out here and picking snakes up off the road before they get smashed. We'll be letting them go tomorrow over in the hills by Placerville.
Cop: Seriously?
Me: Yes, we do this a lot. I like snakes; hate seeing so many smashed ones out here.
Cop: You're right, I see new dead ones every night.
Chris: (hefts bag) Well there's three less dead ones tonight right here.
Cop: Hey, could I have a look at your snakes.
Me: You can look at them, sure, but they aren't my snakes.
Cop: (looks at me funny) What do you mean, they're not your snakes?
Me: I mean they are snakes in themselves, for themselves. I'm just doing them a favor..
(Chis hands me the bag and I start to open it.)
Me: I should warn you, we named the littlest one "Bitey McBiter," and it wasn't at all in the ironic tradition of naming. This big one here is pretty mellow though.
Cop: Hey, these are some beautiful snakes.
Me: I know, right? They're much better looking unsmashed into the pavement.
The foregoing conversation about an actual bag of snakes, an actual cop, and an actual pull over in an actual unregistered Olds Cutlass supreme piece of crap never actually happened. The actual conversation was pretty interesting too, but this isn't it, which got me thinking: I wonder if there are more conversations that don't happen, then conversations that do happen, and you know something....that's a bag of snakes too, if you think about it too much.
Total: 159967
MAKE IT THREE:
Ontology is a crazy bag of Snakes too, and when you open it up and try to count them they keep moving around and coiling and uncoiling and it gets really hard to tell which coils belong to which Snake, and at least half the Snakes in this bag are named ‘Biter’ in the non-ironic tradition of naming, and about the best way to really get in there to catalog and categorize these living writhing biting contents is to take the bag of Snakes and pound it into a big rock until they all stop moving, but then it’s a bloody bag of dead Snakes and it’s going to start stinking soon enough, and besides that it isn’t nice to kill Snakes, but I’m all about beating this dead horse.
There are far more dead horses than live ones.
“Hi Ho Silver! Away!”