Dear reader,
What do you reckon that a graduating project would look like in clown school?
Images of big shoes and squirting flowers come to mind.
While in clown school, every day was filled with discovery. Every dawn brought with it something new.
Our culminating project?
We created a ten act vaudeville show and toured rural Northern California.
Humboldt County California is a pretty neat place.
Most of the signs by the side of the road are either filled with bullet holes or featured stickers that read US Government OUT of Humboldt County
The community radio station was called K.M.U.D.
They would provide C.A.M.P. updates.
At any given time they’d alert locals about where the Campaign Against Marihuana Planting helicopter was working.
They were a fairly independent kind of folks up there in the hills.
One town we performed it - it may have been Petrolia, or perhaps somewhere else.
Upon entering town, we were greeted by the matriarch. She was about five feet tall and had blonde - grey hair. She had the look of many in the area - not so much stoned, but dazed. She had the look of someone who had shown up for a Grateful Dead concert twenty years prior. Though the band failed to play, she decided to keep the party going in their honour.
Our town is a dry town. Any beer or liquor you’ve brought, please respect our community and do not partake.
Then?
Then she reached into the back of her old Toyota Hi-lux. From it, she pulled out a paper Safeway bag. It was filled with weed.
Take what you need and give the rest back.
That was the exact moment that I realized just how far from home I was.
Alcohol was both legal and socially acceptable.
Yet here in rural Northern California?
Smoking a bulging blunt was considered polite and normal.
But that’s culture for you: arbitrary rules enforced by people who can’t explain why.
It didn’t make sense then and it still doesn’t now.
That’s the thing about being a troll, dear reader.
You spend your whole life learning to see the world from the underside of a bridge - all upside down and back asswards.
We notice the absurdity and see how everyone is walking around in oversized shoes, squirting flowers at each other, and calling it normal.
The only difference?
Some of us get paid for it.
Stay foolish you fiends.