Flashback at the the Lactose Factory

I know, I know - REAL MEN don't wear hair nets. But when you lead the kind of rough and tumble existence I do, protective headware is just part of the gig. Besides, they were afraid my withering follicles might end up in the vat of undetermined foodstuffs. I say 'undetermined' because I've been sworn to secrecy by the North Carolina Dairy Commission. Should I so much as mention the kitchen facility I visited today, two goons with heavy milk moustaches will drag me from my home in the dead of night, take me to the nearest cow pasture and pummel with frozen yogurt cups. I'm a workin' man. I can't afford that kind of time off to recuperate! So bear with me as I dance around the afore-unmentioned cheese product, for in its slightly curdled face I glimped my density. No, really.

There I was, standing on a step ladder and staring into the cheesy abyss when the flashback began. Slowly, the roiling goop went out of focus and past adventures both stunning and mundane blurped to the surface: Suddenly I was touring a survivalist's storage room as two camoflauged ass-hats lectured me as to how the upcoming Y2K computer glitch would surely bring about the End Times. Then I blinked and found myself decked out in surgical scrubs. Soft jazz played in the background as a masked stranger popped off one liners while unsmiling nurses slid a robotic device up a poor man's prostate. On instinct my nose wrinkled and I could smell the stench of ten thousand dead baby chicks. The great flood of '99 had barely subsided and as I picked my way around the yellow cadaver pile, dozens of very alive flies perished under my step.

By then my mind was gone and my knees were locked. Nearby my guides watched as I stood frozen over the goop. Perhaps they thought I was lost in my work, but I was in fact gliding among the clouds. All around me giddy Goodyear employees giggled and squirmed as the great blimp rode up a slow thermal. The famous craft's pilot didn't seem to care; he was turned around in his cockpit seat, passing out signed trading cards along with his wellworn flyboy schtick. I could only blink in protest and as I did a pine branch smacked me in the face. 'Over here boys!' I heard a beefy voice yell and as I looked I saw a monster of a man in a Sheriff's Deputy t-shirt lop the buds off the county's spindliest pot plant. Raising his limp bounty high over his head, he waved the poor dead cannabis to the heavens as the helicopter thundered overhead.

I was about to quantum-leap again when a shrill voice from the left broke my stupor. "Mister, if'n you don't move we cain't put in the Ma-YO-naisse!"

Oh. Yeah. Sorry...