Back in the summer of 2000 I met David Rhoades, a drifter, an overweight, unhappy and generally disgusting individual. The very sight of his thighs was enough to make me vomit, which I did several times. I really should have just stopped looking at those thighs. He was quickly chased out of town by the police and I thought that was the last of him that I should ever see. Fate had other plans for me though. Eight years later a new drifter entered the town. This time it was personal. The town was quickly overrun by the drifter and I was the only survivor. Covered in the blood of my family, I begged the loner to spare me. To my astonishment it was David Rhoades, transformed from a fat piece of dirt to a raw force of nature. When I asked what had happened to him he quietly responded, "Tips for Pros." From that day on I devoted my life to cataloguing these tips into a patented method to help you to a healthier lifestyle!

Feeling death getting closer and closer Peter became more panicked. He desperately seeked an answer as to where his life had gone wrong. Where had he missteped, when had his flow reversed. All of these questions turned his life into a living hell. He was unable to make the necessary step to look outside himself, to look beyond society, to look beyond what he had been told. In his desperation he traveled the lands cursing all whom came to him but always he looked for the easy answer. Some one else to blame for his own problems. One moment which he could somehow undo and then his life would be perfect. One day on his travels he happened to come to the snake farm he had worked out when he was young. The farm was long abandoned and all the snakes were gone except one solitary snake. Peter bent down and asked the snake for guidance. The snake remembered peter and looked at him in the eyes. It disgusted the snake to see what Peter had become, such a weak being with absolutely no greatness. Peter begged for the solution, for the meaning of life from the snake but the snakes wisdom fell on deaf ears. “I am but one old snake, what do I know of the human world. Let this snake be a snake.” With those words the snake slithered off. Peter followed the snake trying to emulate it. On and on he slithered until I ran him over in my truck. When I got out of the car to look at the corpse of Peter, I immediately knew the solution. “Peter, you need not speak, I understand your story well. You shall die very soon and death will bring no peace. So let me give you peace.” Peter’s body was covered in blood, it gushed forward with great intensity. “Peter stop trying to be something and just be Peter.” Peter raised his eyes up to mine and began to cry. It was hard to hear him through all the extensive bone damage but I still understood what he said nonetheless “Thank you kind sir.” It was at this point that I got back in my truck and drove off. When the judge asked me why I had not called 911  and why I had fled the scene of the accident I told him this story, the story of Peter. The story of the decline of a great man and his moment of salvation. Let’s just say the judge didn’t find the story as moving as I thought he would. Thank the stars juries are easy to blackmail.

Peter continued on in life and acquired the principle pleasures of the flesh. A larger house, a faster car, a trophy wife and all that jazz. He assembled what he thought would prove to himself that he was a great man. But never did it work. Always he hungered for more because all that he had only had value in the fact that others could not get it. It was never about the item in itself. So did he continue trying desperately to fill the hole inside himself. That deep dark hole which desires something of substance. Nothing of substance ever came and every day the hole grew larger and larger. Peter kept tricking himself into thinking it was simply further down the material line. But his body was failing. Growing old, becoming weak, slowly dieing. His sense of mortality grew and he became greatly afraid of death. Death reminded him of his life, of the facts of his life. On and on that hole inside of him grew. It became a hole in his soul which he could not plug. It was becoming stronger and more painful each day. Nothing he could do provided him with any comfort and as such it was then pointless to do. All he thought of was his agonizing life. So much pain, but still he clung to it with such greed. Nothing he had ever done had been of substance, always he had done what he thought he was supposed to do and always it meant nothing. One day he would die and his life would have meant nothing.

Life continued on in the way it sometimes does and so it guided peter forward through the world. Over time Peter gained tastes of the pleasures of life. Fame, success, women, money, power, lizards. All were but tastes though, and it is such that the desire for these things began to eat away at Peter. A man of ultimate potential was from then on brought down by his constant need for a quick fix. All of these pleasures were slight, but slight enough to drive him forward to try get more. Inside of him a jealousy started to grow. A small insecurity sprang forward from a place of strength. Society had sought to give Peter incentives to help him push himself but society had not restrained itself. The very ideas it placed inside of Peter about what is best in life slowly began to nag him. Now if some man had a higher paying job than he was a greater man, if a his girlfriend was better looking than he was greater, if more people knew his name than he was a greater man. This desire to be the best person had become twisted and created a man which was now who only obsessed with himself. What worried Peter most of all was the existence of people who did not follow his system. These people did not play by the rules and as such were considered by him to be monsters and criminals. Peter had become what the world had always wanted him to become, a scumbag.