How to Become a "BI-WINNER" (TM)

Several nights ago, I started receiving rather incoherent text messages from Bradley the Buyer. Except he told me he wasn't Bradly The Buyer anymore, now he was "Rusty." 

"Ok...Rusty," I said, "What's going on, and are you ready to start writing for Modern Mythology?"

"Yes. I am living it."

"Um. What's the piece?"

"It is Fully Retarded in practical terms. This will be a success story and cautionary tale!" 

"We're already dead anyhow," I said. And I know this because I have the logs, not because I actually remember. "Time is like an optical illusion."

"I mean really, who injects bath salts, without even knowing what it is is? Who is already manic? THIS GUY. But really the downside is an illusion, while we are on the subject of illusion, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom and I have become stronger through living hell I am a walking Encyclopedia of pharmacological data. Say what you will about Hunter Thompson but he was clearly Bi-winning!"

And thus began what was supposed to be a story for this blog, but which became something altogether different. Well. That was around midnight. I'm not making any of this up, by the way.

At 1am he told me he was writing for me. Again. Ok, I said. Must be operating in BenzoDiazaVision, some kind of infinite loop. Maybe he would provide an article of subcultural analysis, maybe highlighting the myths of--

At 2am, I was his editor. He was rambling about shooting "bath salts." I thought, "they aren't paying me enough to do this. Wait. They aren't paying me anything, anymore." Things were getting ugly, on the other end. We had to wait this out. I was too sober to follow his thoughts. Bath salts? Why does he keep talking about bath salts? 

At 3am, I was listening to Dirt for the 10th time and the opiates kicked in. I thought, maybe Rusty has really tapped a cultural vein. Maybe he's onto something. I'd best actually read the 100 text messages and pages of seeming gibberish that were clogging all my digital devices. I also finally googled "bath salts + drugs" and...was horrified. There's a news story that begins about a guy who did this shit and carved up his face with a knife "...but not everyone is so lucky." LUCKY? What the fuck happened to the other people?

I don't know what to tell you folks. I was wrong. I don't know how to spin this. It's like a theater with one actor on stage playing all the roles - badly - and there's just a couple in the audience, fingering each other under the seats, and a guy passed out and possibly dead on smack. (Tito?) And you. Staring in slack-jawed confusion. 

Here are the transcripts. (PDF) In full, though he claims that this is "Only the Preface." Make of them what you will.

Note: Here is the Porcupine Tree video, to which this document refers.