Noah Cicero - Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products.

I lay in bed one night and read more of Sherwood Burke’s notebook.

Sherwood Burke wrote:

These are my real criminal thoughts. NEOTAP is trying to remove my thoughts and fill me with new thoughts. I still retain my thoughts. Corrections have taken all my money, my ability to work, my ambition, my ability to even resemble a human being. They control all my behaviors, they analyze all my behaviors, but they will not get to my thoughts. I still have my thoughts.

Criminal Thought #1.I want to get a woman pregnant. I will find the fattest stupidest woman I can find. I don’t care what race she is, probably white. If you have been to prison, fat white girls are easy. All you gotta do is show them some prison tats and a fat white trash girl will fuck you. I will get the nastiest woman I can find. A woman I know for sure will not be responsible for the child. She won’t even talk to the child, she won’t even take the child to the park, she won’t even get a job at McDonald’s to at least have some money to buy the child a Christmas present. No, she will scam the government out of every dollar she can. Yeah, that kind of woman, I want that one. She is going to be so nasty. I will get her pregnant. I will beat her when she is pregnant. She will take it because she is used to getting beat. I will ask her how much her last boyfriend beat her and then beat her less than him, so she feels like she has a better situation. Then when the child is born I will leave her. I think I will go back to prison. I will steal something from a Wal-Mart like a video game system or a bookshelf. The fat girl who gave birth to my child will write me letters in prison, she will tell me she loves me, I will tell her to send me money, she will do it because she is a fucking asshole. I will laugh the whole time. During the whole time I am in prison she will be fucking other men. She won’t tell me she is fucking other men. I will use this as ammunition so when I get out I can leave her and not feel guilty. She will say, “I sent you money the whole time you were in.” I will respond, “I don’t care, you were fucking every Tom, Dick and Harry in the trailer park.” It will be really funny. I will leave her, then I will get a job working under the table as a landscaper in the summer and in the winter I will work at a car wash under the table. I won’t pay child support. I will do lots of drugs and never see my kid. It will be really funny.

Criminal Thought #2.I will become a pastor at an evangelical church when I get out. I will tell them I had been in prison for many years and during those many years I spent many hours studying the Bible, which is true. I was stuck in a jail for six months once awaiting trial and the jail library had a bunch of mystery and romance novels and nothing remotely good, so I was stuck reading the Bible for six months. I read the whole damn thing from Genesis to Revelation four times. I wrote a whole notebook on the Bible, it got lost when I transferred from the jail to the prison, I didn’t care. I would prove to the evangelicals that I knew my Bible. I wouldn’t ask questions about the animals on the boat or if poverty was actually a necessity. I would simply quote from it and show proficiency. I would tell them that I was saved by Jesus Christ. They wouldn’t ask for evidence. They don’t care about evidence. I would get a job as a pastor, maybe a youth pastor with all the young girls, oh yeah, good. They would give me a paycheck biweekly and I would make connections in the church to get a job. I would behave normally the whole time, and that would be my crime. I’d tell everyone that I was saved, I had the Holy Ghost. I would teach the kids about the Holy Ghost, become obsessed with the Holy Ghost. Work my way up in the church, from youth pastor to traveling pastor, to head pastor. I would be making tons of money being a head pastor at one of those mega-churches. I would get a Christian wife, we would move into a nice house and drive nice cars. I would give long sermons on abortion and how homosexuals were the scourge of society. I would make up elaborate sermons on how homosexuality caused the national debt crisis, it would make perfect sense, everyone would believe me. I would feel great about all the lying. My whole life would be a terrible lie and lots of people would love it. After I convinced everyone to love me I would do something horrible, I would start smoking weed and intentionally get caught doing it by the police. It would ruin everything, everybody would be sad and talk about how I backslid, oh god it would be great. I would go back to prison and I would love it.

Criminal Thought #3.I stood staring at the window of my cell for three minutes today until that stupid new hire Mike told me that I had to go downstairs. Mike is such a fuckhead. He probably went to college and graduated and feels a sense of pride that he functions. He looks at us and knows we are scum. He knows he has never got arrested, the loser has never even got a DUI, what a fuck. Mike doesn’t look happy though: he does look kind of depressed, his shoulders are hunched over. He doesn’t know how to show authority. He might be different. I said to Mike, “You look depressed.” He stood there, he didn’t say anything. He looked like he wanted to cry. I stood there, waiting for an answer, I have time to wait, he doesn’t have time to wait, he has to hurry up and make sure every room is clear of prisoners. But me, I have time, I have so much time that time isn’t even an issue, I never look at calendars, I have no idea what fucking day it is. I live in a primitive time before the advent of calendars. The other prisoners ask me how long I have, I respond I don’t know, because I don’t. I don’t care, Mike cares. Mike cares about time, he is probably counting the days until they give him health insurance, he is concerned with student loan bills that will come in the mail, he is concerned with his car payment, he is concerned all the time. I have no concerns. I am free, ha ha ha I am not. I would take out a gun and fire on Wall Street, the police would respond by firing back, they would shoot me, I would be Crispus Attucks, the first dead in the new revolution. I want to be Crispus Attucks. God, please let me be Crispus Attucks. I want to be discussed in 8 thgrade history classes for eternity.

I would like to serve the movement by getting killed. This would be my crime, a dirty scourge of humanity named Sherwood Burke would get killed first. I would like to bleed to death in front of everyone, I want to go cold in front of the cameras. I want to be known as a person that got shot for political reasons. I want to be like Socrates, Jesus, Marcus Cicero and William Wallace, I want to be executed. But no one will let me die for a reason. Instead one day on some stupid Wednesday I will die in a gun fight over a drug deal gone wrong. Maybe I will outlive all this incarceration and die a peaceful old man with a wife, surrounded by children who love me. No that won’t happen. I am determined and I take it very seriously that my life ends up shitty and stupid. Instead of marching on Washington or on Wall Street, I will play video games and smoke weed in living rooms full of thrift store furniture across America.

No one at Wall Street is thinking about me in this treatment prison. They don’t care about me sitting in here rotting away, they probably think I am the scum of the earth too. I feel like scum, I feel like shit that needs to be wiped and flushed down the toilet. People look at me and think I am what is bad about America. I shouldn’t join any protest, I should just stay in correctional facilities.

I have no voice.

Criminal Thought #4. After I get out of prison I will finish college and get an economics degree. I will go to New York and become a stock broker or a hedge funder, I will work my way up and achieve a high-level position. They will be very impressed with my organizational and troubleshooting skills. I will be in charge of things. I will have power. I will have so much money I will buy into large businesses and sit on the Board of Directors. I will give myself bonuses. I will rake in the cash. I will hire lawyers to find loopholes so I don’t have to pay any taxes, it will be funny as shit. I will use the whole world as my playground, nothing will matter to me. I will hire lobbyists to deregulate my sector of the economy. I will not give a fuck about workers or nature. Fuck nature will be my slogan. Fuck the middle-class will be my slogan. Fuck everyone that gets in my way. I will only think about myself. I will pay my entry level employees $8.50 an hour, I don’t care if they have mouths to feed or student loan payments, it doesn’t matter to me. I will only put my factories in China and Mexico, and if I do put a factory in America it will be in places that give me a 15 year tax rebate. I hate taxes, I hate the worker. I will vote to have health insurance taken away from millions, I will vote so hospitals let people die who don’t have health insurance. I will watch the masses burn. I will vote to take away social security; I will watch the elderly burn. I don’t care if the elderly are homeless, fuck ’em, why don’t they work harder? Take a fucking bath and get a job. That will be my slogan, my life-affirming prayer to the gods, take a fucking bath and get a job. They will take a bath and get a job making $8.50 an hour. I will make millions, maybe even billions. I will care about nothing, my life will be good and theirs won’t, who gives a fuck. I will start giving giant campaign contributions to politicians, I will make them into what I want them to be, they will do what they are told. I will give them prestige and power, my prestige will be less than theirs but my power will be greater, who gives a fuck about virtue, about goodness, about harmony, when I will have all the power. I want all the power, I want everything, I will become part owner of oil companies and banks, then I will be like a god. I want to be like a god, I will rise so high that Forbes will put me on their cover. Everyone will know then I am truly a god to be feared. I will never allow a union at any of my businesses, I will never allow my workers to strike or ask for better pay. I will fire them all if they want anything. I will not pay my taxes, I will get offshore accounts to hide my money. It will be beautiful, but sadly it won’t be criminal. Which means I can’t do it, I only like to do criminal things.