That's the thing with Ralph, he thinks of himself as some kind of HST knock-off gonzo journalist.
Yet he can't give us some kind of compelling story about his wrenched ankle.
Something like - Being pursued by some seemingly carnivorous iguanas I had no other choice than to ditch it, take a header. Knowing though my powers of recuperative abilities, I chose to saunter back to the crackshack and check my Twitter.
I asked Deepseek to give me a short story about a fat drunken american in Mexico known as "The Ragepig" in the prose and style of HST.
The Ballad of the Ragepig: A Drunken Odyssey in the Heart of Mexico
The sun was a molten god, hammering its wrath down on the cracked asphalt of Merida. The air was thick with the stench of tequila, sweat, and the faint undercurrent of desperation that clings to every gringo who stumbles south of the border in search of something they canāt quite name. And there, in the midst of this swirling chaos, was The Ragepigāa monument to excess, a walking testament to the American Dream gone horribly, hilariously wrong.
The Ragepig was not a man; he was a force of nature. Three hundred pounds of greasy fury stuffed into a Hawaiian shirt that had long since surrendered to the stains of a thousand spilled margaritas. His face was a roadmap of broken capillaries, his eyes two bloodshot marbles rolling in a sea of confusion and rage. He was a man who had long since stopped asking āwhyā and instead embraced the chaos of his existence with a perverse glee. Tonight, he was on a missionāa mission to drink Mexico dry and leave a trail of destruction in his wake.
It started, as these things often do, in a dimly lit cantina on the edge of town. The Ragepig had stumbled in hours earlier, drawn by the siren call of cheap liquor and the promise of trouble. The bartender, a wiry man with a face like a dried-up riverbed, took one look at him and knew he was in for a long night. But he poured the drinks anyway, because thatās what you do when a hurricane walks through your door.
The Ragepig drank with the kind of reckless abandon that could only come from a man who had long since stopped caring about consequences. Tequila shots disappeared down his gullet like water into a desert sinkhole. Beers were chugged, glasses were smashed, and the cantinaās jukebox was commandeered to play a never-ending loop of Lynyrd Skynyrdās āFree Bird.ā The other patronsālocals and tourists alikeāwatched in a mixture of awe and horror as The Ragepig transformed the bar into his own personal circus.
By midnight, the cantina was a war zone. Tables were overturned, chairs were broken, and the floor was slick with a mixture of spilled beer and God knows what else. The Ragepig was in his element, a drunken king holding court over his kingdom of chaos. He had somehow acquired a sombrero, which sat precariously on his head like a crown made of straw and bad decisions. His laughter echoed through the bar, a deep, guttural sound that seemed to shake the very foundations of the building.
But even kings must fall, and The Ragepig was no exception. As the night wore on, his movements became more erratic, his speech more slurred. He was a ticking time bomb, and everyone in the cantina knew it was only a matter of time before he exploded. The bartender, sensing the inevitable, began to quietly usher the other patrons out the door. By the time The Ragepig realized what was happening, he was aloneājust him, the bartender, and the ghosts of a thousand bad decisions.
āAnother round!ā he bellowed, slamming his fist on the bar with enough force to rattle the bottles on the shelves.
The bartender shook his head. āNo mĆ”s, seƱor. Youāve had enough.ā
The Ragepigās eyes narrowed, and for a moment, it looked like he might launch himself across the bar and throttle the man. But then, as quickly as the rage had come, it was gone, replaced by a look of almost childlike confusion. He swayed on his stool, the sombrero slipping down over his eyes, and muttered something incomprehensible before sliding off the stool and landing in a heap on the floor.
The bartender sighed and went back to wiping down the bar. He had seen this beforeātoo many times to count. The Ragepig would pass out, wake up with a hangover that could kill a lesser man, and stumble off into the night, leaving behind nothing but memories and a trail of destruction. It was the circle of life, Mexican-style.
But The Ragepig wasnāt done yet. As the bartender turned his back, he stirred, groaning as he pushed himself up off the floor. He was a man possessed, driven by some unseen force that refused to let him rest. He stumbled out of the cantina and into the night, the sombrero still perched on his head like a drunken halo.
The streets of Merida were alive with the sounds of music and laughter, but The Ragepig was deaf to it all. He was on a mission, though even he couldnāt have told you what it was. He lurched from one bar to the next, leaving a trail of chaos in his wake. He challenged a mariachi band to a drinking contest, arm-wrestled a street vendor over a plate of tacos, and somehow ended up in a heated argument with a stray dog over a half-empty bottle of mezcal.
By the time he reached the edge of town, The Ragepig was a shadow of his former self. His shirt was torn, his face was streaked with dirt and sweat, and his sombrero was hanging by a thread. But still, he pressed on, driven by some primal instinct that refused to let him quit. He was a man on the edge, teetering on the brink of oblivion.
And then, it happened.
As he stumbled down a narrow alley, The Ragepigās foot caught on a curb. For a moment, he hung in the air, a grotesque parody of a ballet dancer, before crashing to the ground with a sound that could only be described as a wet thud. The sombrero flew off his head and landed in a puddle, where it floated like a sad, soggy reminder of better days.
The Ragepig lay there, sprawled on the pavement, as the world spun around him. His ankle throbbed with a pain that cut through the haze of alcohol and brought him crashing back to reality. He tried to stand, but the pain was too much, and he collapsed back onto the ground with a groan.
For the first time in what felt like forever, The Ragepig was still. He lay there, staring up at the night sky, as the sounds of the city faded into the background. The rage that had fueled him for so long was gone, replaced by a hollow emptiness that seemed to stretch on forever.
And then, as if on cue, the heavens opened up, and a torrential rain began to fall. The Ragepig didnāt move. He just lay there, letting the rain wash over him, as the weight of his own existence pressed down on his chest. He was a broken man, a cautionary tale, a living embodiment of the American Dream gone off the rails.
But even in his darkest hour, there was a strange kind of beauty to The Ragepig. He was a man who had lived life on his own terms, who had embraced the chaos and the madness and the sheer, unrelenting absurdity of it all. And as he lay there, wallowing in pain and self-pity, he couldnāt help but laughāa deep, guttural laugh that echoed through the empty streets of Merida.
Because in the end, thatās all there was. Laughter, pain, and the knowledge that no matter how far you fall, you can always get back up again. The Ragepig may have been down, but he wasnāt out. Not yet.
And somewhere, in the distance, a mariachi band began to play.
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I fucking love this AI, I wasn't wasting API credits on this so I fired up the free shit on the site, still great.