Billboards

As I walked down the street, I saw the billboards watching me. The Happy Cow, selling… himself? his friends, family?… His joyful face up high above next to a pound of flesh. Happy Cow Beef Company - we chop ‘em up before they know what hit ‘em the billboard reads, but that’s not what the Happy Cow says to me. To me, he says the CIA is getting off their plane at the airport now. I don’t fully believe the CIA would fly coach, but that’s what he says. Nope, no private jet - two agents crammed in coach. And once they have their luggage, they’re gonna come fucking kill me. I sure hope there is a luggage mix up.

“No luggage mix-up!” shouts the Lumberjack selling… Viagra? about a block away. My eyes aren’t great.

“Are you on a billboard for Viagra?! What does a lumberjack have to do with getting your dick hard…” I shout back at him, my voice quieting as the last words escape my mouth, realizing how foolish I sound! Lumberjacks get tons of people’s dicks hard! And also, I should be less focused on these billboards people were probably paid six figures to design and more focused on the CIA agents coming to kill me. Still, I stay for a moment to hear the Lumberjack respond.

“No, this is a billboard for Vitamix! Get your eyes checked, you dumb bitch!” The Lumberjack pauses, I can tell he isn’t quite done talking though, “and I’ll have you know I can still turn quite a few heads even if I am getting up there in age!”

Feeling slightly guilty about insulting the Lumberjack like that, I scurry away - after all, the CIA agents are coming for me. I don’t know how the Lumberjack knows their luggage was put on the right plane - or how the Happy Cow knows the agents are on a plane at all… or that they are coming for me. No time to ask questions when one is running from CIA agents.

As I dart and dash between buildings, down streets, hoping to find somewhere to hide maybe? Or am I just trying to get as far away as possible? I’m not sure. Are the CIA agents coming to the exact spot I was informed about them or are they coming after me, the moving target? If I keep running and they keep coming after me, wherever I am, then it seems it may be best to hide. Or perhaps it is best to just keep moving and at some point I will be far enough away from wherever they believe I was that they can no longer find me. I’ve watched a lot of thrillers, cat-and-mouse type of movies, but never really fully grasped the whole being on the lam thing and how best to do it. Perhaps I could go join some Amish people like that Harrison Ford movie The Conversation - just kidding, that’s a Gene Hackman movie, Harrison Ford only has a small role in it… and it’s not about Amish people at all, it’s actually about technology, the movie I was really referring to was Witness. But enough joking, I am fleeing for my life!

Everywhere I go the billboards watch me. The polyamorous cartoon gorillas selling… dog food? And the stern old man selling, um, car washes? Do they need billboards for car washes? Don’t the car washes just have signs up saying “come in here to get your car washed?” They don’t give me any tips or updates about the CIA agents, they just watch me as I dart and dash, as I dip and dive. I almost get hit by a car and the cobra selling malt liquor laughs. The baby with a phone number to call if I want evidence that candy is bad for my teeth looks like he wants to tell me something, but he isn’t old enough to form sentences.

Then I see the vampire selling real estate outside the Taco Cult restaurant. He tells me he’s got some information for me, but I have to pay him. I tell him I don’t know how to pay a billboard monster and he seems hurt I referred to him as a “monster,” but he tells me there’s a clothing shop with only two shirts in it that is a front for a heroin cartel and if I buy the green shirt, there will be a note the vampire wrote on the tag. So I keep moving - now with a destination. But I get to the store and there’s a sign saying the only employee is on break so it’s essentially closed for… well the sign says half an hour, but obviously they guy put the sign up before I got there so it’s less than that.

I stand and I wait. The guy comes back and is wearing a fucking penis costume like he just left a bachelorette party or something. I don’t get it. But I don’t want to really get into a conversation with him so I just pretend it’s normal - which is hard because it’s not. It’s weird. As I go to grab the shirt off it’s hanger to buy it, I keep thinking about how weird it is. Like it’s already weird on it’s own to be dressed like that at all, but at work? Even any job at all. Like if you worked at a bar or somewhere that let’s you dress in street clothes. If you worked in the backroom in a warehouse or whatever where no customers see you, your boss still wouldn’t let this shit fly. And this dude is working retail. I mean, I guess it is a front, but still. So I fucking open my mouth, I can’t help it.

As I put the shirt on the counter to purchase it, I ask, “why are you dressed like a penis at work?”

And he gets so mad. Like you aren’t even imagining it right. He gets absolutely furious. Think about the most angry your dad has ever been. And think about how it was sort of justified. Like you either were just an absolute brat for 10 hours straight or you were genuinely innocent, but you almost accidentally burnt down the house or cut your brother in half or got hit by a car. So your dad is just like maximum emotion and he’s so angry because we’re all socialized wrong so it’s just easiest to be mad about things when you gotta tap into some emotion. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, it’s something I’ve been thinking about and I haven’t fully fleshed it out yet, but think about your dad super pissed off, yelling at you at the top of his lungs like either he cannot fucking believe that he is raised such a fucking dickhead or like he cannot at all accept how close he came to being one of those super shitty parents that let their kid die like he is not gonna be one of those horror stories so he’s mad. This guy was madder than that. For a legitimate question. He is acting like I walked into his home, not his place of work - a public place - and started trying to make him justify his life decisions and, honestly, even in the privacy of one’s own home, I really just could not see why someone would be wearing a penis costume, like how do those businesses stay afloat, selling penis costumes? But anyway, he’s big mad. And I’m trying to calm him down so I can buy the shirt, but I am also a little bit still trying to get the answer - curiosity killed the cat and all that.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that in a panic I just kind of grab the shirt and run. “I’ll pay later” is how I justify it. I’m not stealing. But also it’s a drug cartel front. It’s almost more ethical to steal it. It’s pretty easy to out run a guy in a penis costume, his legs can’t move much and also tourists or whoever are trying to stop him to take pictures like they’re in Time Square. I just run ‘cause dude’s got cartel connections so I am definitely not getting caught by him. I’d rather take my chances with the CIA agents. I finally get far enough away that I’m pretty sure I lost him - which I guess is how those thrillers go, but it’s much easier to do the whole running away thing when the person is actively chasing you versus when some people just got off an airplane and are coming your way at some point, but aren’t currently in the vicinity - and I look at the tag for the secret message and it just says “made by some child slaves in some country that your government has been committing genocide in since before you were alive” and I think “damn, that vampire is pretty fucking woke, but how is this going to help me get away from the CIA?” so I take the shirt back to the vampire on his billboard to demand some answers.

When I arrive, I’m about to get the question out, but he sees the shirt in my hand and shouts at me like I’m a little kid, “THE GREEN SHIRT! I told you to get the green shirt! That’s the blue one!”

I feel sort of stupid, it kind of makes sense that he’s treating me like a little kid since I did mix up my colors, but still why did he need to make things so complicated? Why can’t he just put the message on both shirts? Or just have one shirt in the store? It’s not a real store!

Now he’s shouting at me more - or I guess he never stopped, I just kind of started blocking him out while I was thinking of ways to blame him for the fuck up. But he’s shouting “the BLUE shirt was for the banker to learn a lesson about the horrors of capitalize! You have to go back and return the shirt!”

But like I said, I would rather take my chances with the CIA agents coming to kill me than that cartel penis costume dude that I sort of stole the shirt from. God, I hope that banker not learning his lesson from the shirt isn’t going to have some massive butterfly effect thing that kills a bunch of kids in a factory collapsing in a third world country or… who am I kidding? That’s obviously exactly what’s going to happen, it’s pretty obvious, but when we get right down to it, like gun-to-the-head, gut-reaction I guess I do think my life is worth more than all of theirs combined. I mean, on an intellectual level I do not and on a moral level I also do not, but I am not going to risk my life returning the shirt to stop it from happening so one whatever level that is, I do.

So now I’ve got a vampire billboard mad at me and a guy in a penis costume with cartel connections mad at me and some CIA agents who maybe aren’t mad at me, but are going to kill me. I start thinking about how much simpler things were back when I was just chatting with the Happy Cow and even after I’d offended the lumberjack a bit. I knew the CIA was out to kill me, but life was still simpler just a few hours earlier talking to them. And as I reminisced about those simpler, more pleasant times, it dawned on me that I had no reason to trust a cow selling his own kind to humans to consume and…well the lumberjack, I wasn’t as confidence in dismissing though I think partly that was because it felt like adding insult to injury after offending him, but what kind of lumberjack sells a blender? Isn’t a blender sort of the competition to an axe? Like television killed the radio star? The blender is just faster, automated chopping, the kind that could put a lumberjack out of work - so a cow selling the flesh of his own and a lumberjack putting his fellow lumberjacks out of work? Why should I trust them?

100% content that the CIA was not trying to kill me, I headed home to get some rest. I don’t think I’ve done anything important enough for the CIA to try to kill me. I mean, I don’t think they’re opposed to killing me, but it would probably be in some sort of friendly fire sort of way. Maybe they’ll drop a bomb on my neighbors and not care when I also die? Was that the CIA that dropped the bomb on MOVE? I don’t know. All I know is that I was headed home to watch some TV - where the ads are supposed to talk to me.