PRISONER EXPRESS

I got lucky. My cage is on the end of the line, so there is only two guys slamming and banging on one side. The floor is too thick for the upper two guys to be heard much through it. Even better, I'm forced to live with an old, smelly wino that does nothing but sleep and be quiet. Stink I can handle better than noise. Stink all you want, just shut the hell up!

I just finished the cockroach wars. These neighbors are gone for a while, mustering their forces to attack again later. We have window slits that we can even put out hands out to feel the freedom. My human neighbors use them to toss out every kind of processed meat garbage. They sneak these foods back from the mess hall. They are the soy-'burgers', turkey-dogs, vita-sausages, hot links salamis and bolognas that are inedible to persons who wish to retain healthy colons 20 years from now. These gut-meats are for the cat-ranch. Practically everyone in the ground floor level is a cat-rancher. Cats love gut meats and proliferate 20 times faster than ordinary live stock. They grow fat on this oily, carcinogen-laden diet. They grow big and strong quickly, and there is not much that tastes better and a Siamese-sirloin, corned calico or tabby bacon. At least not in prison, that is.

The guys further east have a bird preserve. They throw out bread and hide behind curtains in the dark, staring out chinks in the cloth. They both have threads tightly clutched in their sweaty hands, and they salivate. They wait patiently for hours for a big, fat sparrow or a lumbering starling to step into their loop of string. They yank quickly, and often snag a toe. The bird squawks and flaps frantically, but gets hauled in rapidly. Then the wait begins anew. It takes a lot of birds to make breakfast.

Around the corner are neighbors who are always collecting paper and yard waste to shred and compost. They are the fungus farmers. Spring is their time. Edible and psychedelic mushrooms grow fast and plentiful all year round, but taste best in the spring. Just don't eat the brown ones. The white ones are for eating; the blue ones are for tripping.

All of us neighbors get together on special days and cluster around the microwave, 'cooking' our produce in plastic bowls. I share, but I don't eat any of the stuff they have made. I'm the only one who knows that nuking plastic for long periods leaches phthalates out into the food. These non-microwave-safe bowls are full of phthalates, which are a health hazard because they mimic estrogen. I used to tell prisoners of this danger, but they'd only laugh and keep frying their plastic bowls every day. I don't bother telling them anymore, and they have all forgotten or moved on. I just observe that their voices have raised a couple of notes, that their distribution of fat has changed slightly, that they talk less about sex (and violence), and that their paps have begun to depend like breasts. Their changes benefit me because they've become less noisy, less argumentative and much less aggressive. I feel guilty for not continuing to tell them, because the changes are permanent. Phthalate pollution downstream from plastics manufacturing facilities are so strong that they are no make frogs or fish: all the males have either died, mutated horribly or turned into females, depending on how young they were when they were first poisoned by phthalates.

So, you see, I have to ask: is it selfish of me to get good neighbors this way; by exploiting their ignorance? The ones before them didn't want to know and just laughed it off, so is it my duty to keep telling them that their ignorance is killing them? I'd really like to know your opinion.

Tell me at (www.jamesbauhaus.org) Bauhaus@quik.com. Also, anyone wishing to learn more about how ignorance hurts people should visit my website too for some free knowledge that most people never even though of. This way I can atone somewhat for letting this happen, in case silence is a sin.