I took my time, shabbily and a bit crestfallen after finding out that my meniscus is torn and that I won't be lunging, squatting or running again. I blew it out squatting to compensate for the hip that I damaged running 11 moths ago.

So, as I read The Worm Ouroboros, of a goblin going his own way between the distrustful ranks of witches and demons, I walk the very summery ground where I will likely face my ebonic waterloo near midnight some time ahead.

And what do I see?

I see numerous houses, occupied by hipster pseudo-elites, yuppie-plutosites, yupster morality wells, festooned with mutually incongruent signage.

On one side of each porch is a green poster that proclaims:

NO ROYAL FARMS

Royal Farms is the favorite convenience store of black folk in Baltimore. Their fried chicken is said to be better than KFC or Popeyes. Their ATM withdraws are free! The facilities are large, open and well-lit and are much safer than small four-pump stations in the city hunted by hoodrats. To a cultured paleface, Royal Farms is an abomination, Walmart, in your neighborhood, a pustule of blandly homogenized consumerism. But to a kid that grew up buying food through a hole in a plexiglass box-shield, who pumped gas for his first car checking his six o'clock for a stickup boy, who finds comfort in a hot meal that doesn't involve the woman in his life reminding him that she "paid fo that shit, you broke-ass nigga," a top tier convenience stop is like Gilligan's island for a 9-year-old white kid from the burbs—paradise.

So my liberal neighbors loudly proclaim that they do not want, are dead-set against, the black man's chance at a hot meal after his shitty evening job winds down at 10 p.m.

So it makes perfect sense that on the other side of each of these porches is a black sign, proclaiming in white letters that:

BLACK LIVES MATTER

I jest not.