Was today the first I went back to that same grocery store since the "$33.59" incident? I'm not certain. I might have been there one time, at the most, since then. If I did go there one time since then, there was nothing to report. Today I am wondering about the amount of the groceries I selected from a list I had in my mind before I went in there. I didn't keep a running total of the cost of those products in my mind and instead had decided before I got there what I wanted to pick up, although there was some uncertainty in my mind about all the products, in that I really did not want to purchase any beer but I did anyway.
Walking back I thinking, as I noted when the total came up on the self-checkout stand, that the amount I was billed, which was $34.60 with tax, was only one cent from being 34.59. Then I thought about how the taxable amount might have been a fraction of one cent and that was rounded up to create $34.60. So that seemed really unimportant to me and I wasn't going to make this note, but I was also thinking, at the time I saw it, that it could also be '3460.' As I wrote that last sentence, on the FM local radio in Seattle the Pink Floyd song "Money" has just started playing.
So even after thinking for a couple hours now about the '3460' I had checked the number and that didn't really seem important enough to take the time to write this note but it lingers in my mind because of the reference about Life Savers candy.
From 11/16/1984 ( RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 - premiere US film "Night of the Comet" ) To 5/8/1994 ( RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 - premiere US TV miniseries Stephen King's "The Stand"::miniseries premiere episode "The Plague" ) is 3460 days
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/w/windtalkers-script-transcript-wind-talkers.html
Windtalkers [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
We've got some new radiomen
from headquarters.
Private Whitehorse...
and Yahzee...
and a couple of sergeants...
Enders and Henderson...
who, if I'm understanding
these orders correctly...
will be covering our Navajos' asses.
God damn you, Joe Enders.
...but I'm telling you...
we're going to be stepping into
our share of the shit, nonetheless.
Any questions?
Sounds like you're dying.
These might help get rid of the taste.
Charlie and I both lost it
on the boat ride from San Diego.
Not many bodies of water in Arizona.
Life Savers really helped.
You want a Life Saver?
What are you doing here?
Just trying to help.
Not what I meant.
You mean, what am I doing in this uniform?
It's my war, too, Sergeant.
I'm fighting for my country,
for my land, for my people.
It's not your people I'm worried about.
Listen, Enders, I'm a codetalker.
It takes me two and a half minutes
to do what used to take an hour.
Somebody wearing a lot more stripes
than you thinks that's worth something.
Remind me to time you when you've got
bullets flying over your head.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Page 968
Who, if not his son?
The rabbit was done. He slipped it off the spit and onto his tin plate.
"All right, all you asshole gyrenes, chow down!"
That made him grin right out loud. Had he been a Marine once? He thought so. Strictly the Parris Island variety, though. There had been a kid, a defective, name of Boo Dinkway. They had ...
What?
Flagg frowned down at his messkit. Had they beaten ole Boo into the ground with those padded poles? Scragged him somehow? He seemed to remember something about gasoline. But what?
In a sudden rage, he almost slung the freshly cooked rabbit into the fire. He should be able to remember that, goddammit!
"Chow down, grunts," he whispered, but this time there was only a whiff of memory lane.
He was losing himself. Once he had been able to look back over the sixties, seventies, and eighties like a man looking down a double flight of stairs leading into a dark-ened room. Now he could only clearly remember the events since the superflu. Beyond that there was nothing but a haze that would sometimes lift a tiny bit, just enough to afford a glimpse of some enigmatic object or memory (Boo Dinkway, for instance ... if there ever had been such a person) before closing down again.
The earliest memory he could now be sure of was walking south on US 51, heading toward Mountain City and the home of Kit Bradenton.
Of being born. Born again.
He was no longer strictly a man, if he had ever been one. He was like an onion, slowly peeling away one layer at a time, only it was the trappings of humanity that seemed to be peeling away: organized reflection, memory, possibly even free will ... if there ever had been such a thing.
He began to eat the rabbit.
Once, he was quite sure, he would have done a quick fade when things began to get flaky. Not this time. This was his place, his time, and he would take his stand here. It didn't matter that he hadn't yet been able to uncover the third spy, or that Harold had gotten out of control at the end and had had the colossal effrontery to try to kill the bride who had been promised, the mother of his son.
Somewhere that strange Trashcan Man was in the desert, sniffing out the weapons which would eradicate the trouble-some, worrisome Free Zone forever. His Eye could not follow the Trashcan Man, and in some ways Flagg thought that Trash was stranger than he was himself, a kind of human bloodhound who sniffed cordite and napalm and gelignite with deadly radar accuracy.
In a month or less, the National Guard jets would be flying, with a full complement of Shrike missiles tucked under their wings. And when he was sure that the bride had conceived, they would fly east.
He looked dreamily up at the basketball moon and smiled.
There was one other possibility. He thought the Eye would show him, in time. He might go there, possibly as a crow, possibly as a wolf, possibly as an insect - a praying mantis, perhaps, something small enough to squirm through a care-fully concealed vent cap in the middle of a spiky patch of desert grass. He would hop or crawl through dark conduits and finally slip through an air conditioner grille or a stilled exhaust fan.
The place was underground. Just over the border and into California.
There were beakers there, rows and rows of beakers, each with its own neat Dymo tape identifying it: a super cholera, a super anthrax, a new and improved version of the bubonic plague, all of them in this place; assorted flavors, as they used to say in the Life Savers commercials.
1984 film "Night of the Comet" DVD video:
DJ voice recording tape: Well, it's time to reach into the old mailbag here. Got a letter from
Samantha: Beam me up, Scotty.
Hector: Okay, girls. Hold it right there. You, the blonde, get into the light.
Regina: Wait. Why don't you just let my sister go. And maybe you and I can work something out.
Samantha: I'm not going anywhere!
Regina: Shut up!
Hector: You got the wrong idea. You, into the light. I'll give you to five. One, two... No? All right. Let's try it this way. Five, four, three -
Samantha: Okay, okay. Do you get a lot of dates this way?
Hector: Open your eyes. Okay. Hey, I know what you're thinking, but -
Regina: That you're a cretin?
Hector: Sweetheart, you haven't seen those freaked-out zombies running around here?
Regina: Yeah, I was jumped by one.
Hector: Well, you got off lucky. Me and this girl pulled into town this morning.
Samantha: You don't work here?
Hector: No. I drive a truck. I was heading to San Diego with this girl I picked up. We were looking for a gas station. That's when we spotted one of those... Whatever they are. Looked like it was eating... Looked like it was eating a cat.
Samantha: A dead cat?
Hector: Semi-dead.
Samantha: Who'd want to eat a live cat?
Hector: Beats the shit out of me. This girl freaked out. Took off running. I spotted her about twenty minutes later. Looked like one of those things had -
Samantha: What?
Hector: Torn her apart.
1984 film "Night of the Comet" DVD video:
Hector: What's with her?
Samantha: I think she's going to be sick or something. A guy she knew - same thing might have happened. Is it safe around here, do you think?
Hector: Yeah. I checked it out.
Samantha: Swell.
