90, 2026 ~ Blog Reception and The Therapist that Bombs Children

    Truth be told, I actually have no clue how Blogger works. I'm not doing any networking, I'm not following any other blogs, I don't know how I'd even find other pages on this site. So the fact that complete strangers are not only managing to find this blog, but are also leaving comments on it as well is nuts!

    Now, we do live in the horrific age of AI, so there's a pretty good chance that all these people might actually be, like, real dead-internet-theory bots and I'm really just talking to an audience of none. But this also happens to be the age of mass psychosis as well, and if I'm going to be honest with you, I'm very willing to indulge in a little psychosis for the sake of living an interesting life.

Still-Signal ~ Screenplay

SCREEN BLACK

POP IN

EXT. FOREST CLEARING - NIGHT

Dead of night. An old 1980's Silver Cadillac rests away from a FLOWING RIVER: Driver's door swung wide open, TURN-SIGNAL BLINKING. The radio antenna to the car is visibly broken off.

A stone-toss away lies TRAVIS, a young man (20) wearing a black leather coat and corduroy pants; he lies on his back, staring up into the stars with a blank expression. His arm dips into the river.

Travis finally sits up. He stares into the forest with a tired expression for a beat. He then turns his head towards his Cadillac, revealing the radio antenna embedded in the back of his head, a little blood trickling down his neck.

Travis gets up and staggers toward the Cadillac.

As Travis finally reaches his car, he pauses for a moment and looks up into the sky. There’s a faint red/blue light from an AIRPLANE SOARING OVERHEAD. Travis gets inside the car and slams the door shut.

The Cadillac ROARS TO LIFE. Travis' hands rest on the steering wheel, his eyes widened and unsure. Travis then tilts his head as he brings his fingers up to his temple, head throbbing in a subtle pain. A DISTANT SIGNAL is slowly being TRANSMITTED to him, sounding like a soft, garbled static.

DISTANT SIGNAL

(creeping in)

Returning to you, caller... 

Don't lose track of... The way...

Travis' expression shifts; becoming stern and focused. His grip on the steering wheel gets tighter. He steps on the accelerator and pulls back onto the road.

EXT. LONE ROAD - NIGHT

CAMERA POINTS OVERHEAD AS tiny slivers of a full moon peer through the branches of trees passing by.

Beside Travis, on the passenger's seat, lies the car radio; ripped straight off from the dash, dead. Travis' gaze remains fixed on the road ahead.

EXT. RADIO STATION PARKING LOT - NIGHT

Travis coasts into the parking lot of a local radio station. A large radio tower looms over the building. It's pitch black inside. No one's home. 

Travis cuts the engine, pushes the car door open, and stumbles out of the Cadillac before moving towards the entrance of the station, the sound of garbled radio static following him.

EXT. RADIO STATION ROOF - NIGHT

Travis climbs to the top of the radio station's roof, where he finds a seat by a lowly ventilation unit. He looks up to the night sky, where the stars flicker above him, and a large, bold full moon stares down on him.

A DOG has managed to find his way up on the roof. The Dog prances toward Travis with a goofy, joyful bounce. Travis scooches over to allow the Dog to lay down by his side.

TRAVIS

I'm late. Sorry.

The Dog gets it. The Dog wags his tail as Travis scratches behind his ears.

TRAVIS (cont'd)

Tomorrow's going to be the day. Everything happens tomorrow. The universe happens tomorrow. I'm excited to finally see it.

Okay, the Dog doesn't get that part, but they're happy that he's happy. Travis scratches the back of his head, near where a radio antenna is sticking out.

TRAVIS (cont'd)

But... That's not until tomorrow, though. I just want to enjoy tonight.

The Dog definitely gets that part though.

The garbled, distant signal becomes clearer. Shifting sharply from WHITE NOISE into OLD FOLK MUSIC. Travis and the Dog sit together for a while longer, watching the night sky.

FADE TO BLACK.

88, 2026 ~ Astigmatism

Every once in a while when I was young I would look directly into the sun because of the slight spot of discoloration it would produce in your vision. After gaining that off-hue island in my eye I'd look around at my surroundings and imagine that the discolored spot that bounced around the walls were actually footprints which belonged to an animal or some entity that existed beyond what I was able to normally perceive, perhaps traversing on another plane of reality. I liked taking a glimpse beyond the firmament, I thought it was easier than people made it out to be. 

86, 2026 ~ Timeloop

    During my drive to New Orleans, Louisiana before the 2026 New Years, I saw this off-beat gas station stationed a little ways away from the main highway. It was pretty nondescript, stuck firmly within the border of a wetland forest off some miscellaneous sideroad. The only thing that really stood out to me about it was its name: TIMELOOP.

    It was emboldened on the top of the gas station in blue capitalized letters. No other moniker, no other adjectives alongside it, nothing. It wasn’t even called “Timeloop Gas” or “The Timeloop”. It just read TIMELOOP.

    It just really stuck out to me. I mean, what a grand and mystical name to call your gas station! It sounds like something straight out of a Richard Kelly film. 

    “A Gas Station called Timeloop.” Sounds like a place to be. 

82, 2026 ~ Structure

    I’ve already decided that life is really incomprehensible, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense at all. Even physics and the laws of reality seem really convoluted. Not the “This is too complicated for me” kind of convoluted, but the “This is… needlessly convoluted” kind. Is this really the best way a universe could be put together? Exotic matter? String theory? Black holes? Good grief. Whoever designed this place should really go back to the drawing board. Atoms were an obviously good idea but clearly gravity messed some things up in this little reality-building project.

    I'm being mean. I obviously love the universe we're in. We wouldn't have water and light without it, of course. But there's a lot to reality that seems... flimsy? I mean, black holes are an obvious thing to point to. A huge, gigantic collapse in the fabric of reality, that which only seeks to collapse things even more as it drifts across space and time. Oh gosh, and don't get me started on time. Time really does feel pretty flimsy, I feel like any amount of tampering with it would just collapse the universe, (or, whatever's near-by, at least.) I actually do think that metaphysical time travel is an inherently hedonistic act.

    Maybe the Greeks did have a point in viewing nostalgia as a mental disorder. Nostalgia is all people seem to have these days. Shit, kids these days want to live in 2016 for Christ's sake! I could've sworn that everybody thought that that year was the absolute worst. Is the powers-that-be (Whoever controls the media now) trying to take the piss out of us by forcably making it trendy to be nostalgic for a time that we all knew objectively sucked? Hell if I know.