The Spiral of Shame

First, our loyal reader(s) have every right to expect an appology from us. The degree to which we had lost sight of our original goal is shameful to think of. What began as a spiritual journey of obscure rocker recognition and celebration, was polluted by what I have dubbed the root of all evil...money. In an effort to defray the enormous cost of maintaining a high traffic blog such as this, your friends Ben and V added a link to the top of our page for Google Ads. Suddenly within a matter of a few short months we find ourselves making 1...2...3 dollars! Looking back I can now recognize the early warning signs that eluded us at the time. Trips to the pawn shop to shop for things to BUY rather than fence. Talk of "real foods" we would like to try when we cash out. The heady fantasies about what a real zig-zag must taste like. The roots of greed had penetrated our very hearts, and injected their poison of not caring about obscure rockers any more. Our empire was expanding so rapidly we were losing control of the mechanism by which it was established. But life was about to deal us a crushing blow that would rock the foundation of our lives.
Christmas morning had never held the type of magic that seemed to crackle in the air as Ben and I made our weekly walk to the library to use their computers. "I'm tired of living like this dude....lets just cash this thing out and hit the army surplus store". In another life Ben must have been one of those time share salespeople, cause you just can't tell him no. "Let's do it bro" I replied, and we walked inside. Looking back I don't know what I expected to happen, but the thought that money can't come pooring out of a computer hadn't occured to either of us. So when the website asked for our bank account info so it could deposit our earnings, a knot in my gut tied itself so tight I actually blacked out for a few minutes. When I came to, I was standing in the periodical section, and Ben was balled up in a corner biting his knees (he does that when he's upset). We didn't have a bank account, nor did we own an ID to open one. Our plans lie in ruin. But life was about to toss us a life preserver.
As I escorted a bloody kneed Ben out the doors, the light seemed to blind us. It was like we were seeing the world for the first time. We were barely aware of the kid riding his bike past us when he yelled out "Hey, aren't you the *blankin, blank-faces* that do that *blankin* retarded blog? The shout startled us back to reality. As Ben and I looked at each other, tears filled our eyes, and we gave eachother the most emotional fist tap in the history of fist taps. Yes...we we're those blankin blank-faces, and we would be those blankin blank-faces till we die! We had found our way back. Tempered by the fire of greed, we knew that never again would our resolve to share our love of obscure rockers with the world waiver.
So please accept our humblest appologies. Keep on rockin!

V