Not Paid Enough To Care

I have a great work ethic. It's available for ten dollars an hour, or more. And like watering crabgrass, the more you throw at it the bigger and stronger it gets. I'll work like a fiend for $25. I'll work like a kid in a sweatshop for $50 an hour.

But $5.15 an hour? How much can you expect anyone to care for $5.15 an hour? This is why your burgers never look like the picture on the menu. The guy workin' the clamshell steamer isn't a bad person—or, at any rate, being one does not necessitate the other—they just aren't paid enough to care. Who can blame ‘em? A lot of good folks have spouses and kids and a paycheck that doesn't cover either. With the apathy comes resentment, and eventually you have postal clerks doing what they do best.

Delivering the mail on time.

Now the need for money and respect created by need itself, exacerbated by comic wages, creates the stuff of legends. I love Office Space, Clerks, Fight Club and other movies that glorify characters triumphing over shit jobs and horrendous wages. I've never started an underground all-male societal liberation front with my split personality (but it's on the agenda), nor played hockey on top of a convenience store, but I sure identify with the caged-rat feeling of financial entrapment.

I call it being a writer. There's dignity in starvation.

Years ago, I took a job at a chain sporting goods store at that golden standard of apathy, $5.15 an hour. I shared a counter with Brian the Computer Gamer, the kind of guy who spends his days combing football player spit out of his hair and stays up nights flaming people in chat rooms and trying to break into his dad's liquor cabinet. Not all gamers are like this, but damn, this dude was. I talked about hiking and fishing and bitched about cops pulling me over. Kid stuff. He talked about playing Doom over early internet connections, and how "people" made him angry for not paying him attention. He talked about elaborate plans to avenge his lot in life. The kid had issues. I last heard he worked for the TSA at an airport in Montana.

By shit blind luck and the magic law of averages, we were assigned to the hunting department. We were underpaid, disenfranchised teenagers with master keys to the Wall-O-Rifles. Our job was to sell five hundred dollar rifles and thousand dollar shotguns, then smile and stick out our paws for whatever was left after the taxman raped our $5.15 an hour. We could sell ten thousand dollars worth of shotguns, or pretend we didn't speak English, and take home the same pay.

This opened new opportunities for recreation. "It would increase aiming device accessory sales," I told the manager one day, "if I had a laser out for demonstration purposes." He coughed without looking up from a magazine half-hidden in a manila folder. I took that as permission and had a project-a-dot laser sight sitting, not mounted to anything, on the counter ten minutes later.

Our little red dot danced all around the store for a week. No one wants to buy a deer rifle at eight o'clock at night, on a Wednesday, in January. Nobody wants to sell deer rifles at eight o'clock on a Wednesday night in January, either. We lazed that place like Special Forces painting targets in Afghanistan. The shoe department girl was selling some Nikes to a kid in soccer shorts when we put that dot right on her forehead like an Indian bride.

One Saturday afternoon a gentleman came in and outlined a problem: rabbits were eating his vegetable plants. I gestured to the rifles on the wall. "But I live in the city, so I can't jus' take out af'er 'em with a rifle," he said. I handed him a paintball gun. That was the hardest hard-sell I could manage.

"Good idea," he said, "I shouldn't be killin' 'em any-who." He worked the bolt and trigger back and forth, his eyes lighting up like a kid on meth trashing a candy store. "I'm a preacher, it wouldn't look good, ya know." But spraying the Easter Bunnies in his garden with pink paintballs was fine. OK. It takes all kinds.

I came in one particularly dark and cold winter weekday to find Brian, more despondent than usual, arranging 9mm hollow point bullets on a display case. He made little triangles and circles, then knocked them over and watched them roll. It was how those Real Stories of the Highway Patrol episodes started. When he put 'em back in, he left the noses up to spell his initials.

"Star-Demon-Sixty-Nine dumped me," he said.
"Online girlfriend?"
"Yup."

I just walked away, over towards the fishing area. There was a confused looking man, thirties, glasses, red button down shirt, khakis.

The confused guy wasn't in the fishing section when I got there. I caught a glimpse of him with a taller, blonder woman in a blue jacket over by shoes. Arranging the lures, I spared a glance towards camping. There the guy was in camping, checking out tents, his girl unfolding a collapsible chair. Red shirt, blue coat, blonde and blonder. Them alright...on the other side of the store from themselves.

But stranger things have happened, and were happening, right behind me, in fact. Brian was completing a sculpture in .30-06 soft points. "Bullet-Henge." His keys were on the counter, the racks of rifles within reach behind him.

There was the guy in the red shirt looking at knives and optics. His girl trailed behind, staring at the paintball stuff. I turned around, facing the shoe department again, and there was the dude right next to me. Whoa.

"Sorry if I scared you," he said, his girl smiling at me.
"We do that a lot."
"Huh?"
"We're twins."
"Huh?"
"My brother and I," and then his girl spoke.
"So are my sister and I."
"We met at a twins convention," he explained as his brother came over. They dressed exactly alike.

I wonder if they wife swap? Might they accidentally?

Times were strange at the hunting counter. Twins and bullet art, lasers and boredom. But hey, they didn't pay me enough to care.

The Memorial Tournament

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.- Horace

These words are not unlike most fancy ones uttered by lawmakers, professors, and the poets laureate of the past - incomprehensible and somewhat secretive. But you don't need to understand Latin, to smell the bullshit laced between the syllables. And just in case you missed out on that class, permit me the honor of translation so we might all start this Memorial Day together, in cadence:

It is sweet and right to die for your country

Nay, not even untalented hacks like myself take holidays off in these hard times, forcing my hands to the keyboard at this late hour. But on this morning, what better task might these soft hands serve than type tribute to our soldiers? For I have lifted no gun in our defense, nor stormed a beach to earn my keep, nor bombed small Middle Eastern children. In my cowardice, I cannot understand the stress of combat, the sort of paranoid fatigue that moves men to unload their carbines into families approaching checkpoints, or incarcerate human beings for years without due process. Being a complacent American citizen, my humble job is to pay the bills, root on the home team, and believe what I'm told. In this manner, our government relegates us to the role of a 1950's housewife. Quiet. Docile. Gullible. And putting out whenever Father returns from his hard work in Babylon, with his cock thick and heavy from all that killing and looting. Indeed, I almost balked before saying anything on this day of days, choosing an easier softer path by attending a parade, and pretending this holiday was anything more than a massive cherade.

But then I remembered you obviously don't need to have served your country to assume a place at the podium. Indeed, you apparently don't have to have any military experience at all to reallocate public funds, send young Americans overseas, then smile while you wave a flag at the ranks.
Because on this Memorial Day, your President Elect, George W. Bush is letting both his faces show - finally. Perhaps his public relations crew has gotten lax, or maybe grown tired of his bullshit as well, but the intervals between his lies and his cosmetic cover-up were too short this time. Now I'd like to think you don't have to reside near nor be employed by a military base to notice such news, but apparently the American majority glanced right over this tidbit:

Supporting these facilities wastes billions of taxpayer dollars -- money that can be better spent on giving you the tools to fight terrorists and confront 21st-century threats.- Bush, 27 May 2005

Wow. After dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into overtaking Afghanistan's opium and Iraq's oil, our efforts to stop the financial blood loss involve not a total withdrawal of force from these shithole battlefields, but shutting down dozens of installations around the country. Fucking brilliant. Just like that, 200 million sheep stop shouting about this clusterfuck war and start throwing stones at their own fence. Hell, I'm not sure why we have any soldiers on American soil at all. Ain't nuthin' to pillage here. Just burning taxpayer money. What's next, you ask, after we trim our military presence to "fight terrorism"?

Give the terrorists money.

That pigfucker is funding international terrorism, and has been for years. Between selling F-16s to both Pakistan and India, both of which are funnytalking nuclear powers in a stand-still and their little brown fingers are on the fucking button, nobody has said shit about the billions funneled into Israel. Yeah, Israel, a nation known to stealing land, blowing people up in the streets, and another nuclear power. For what? Exactly what is the national product of Israel that they export worldwide to earn their keep? Jews? Or maybe they just need all those American dollars to fight off those fiesty Palestinians, who seem to have a problem with having their homes razed to the ground.

So let's buy them off, too. Just after pledging $50 million to the Palestinian Authority, Bush said this:

[the aid is meant] "to help ensure that the Gaza disengagement is a success."- Bush, 26 May 2005

So, while throwing barges of cash to Israel to ensure the Gaza engagement is a success, we toss a couple of trash bags over the fence to help suicide bombers pay for their espresso. Palestinians bomb shit. They're savages. And truly, don't deserve to be left the fuck alone on their own turf so they can fuck and worship and not bomb everybody back to the Brass Age. Not enough to pay for their persecution by a bunch of whiny Jews, now we are the official sponsors of their explosive attire. Hell, why don't we just pick up the medical bills for both sides, and maybe put a big fucking scoreboard up on the Gaza Strip?

Kids get bombed on a daily basis there. Their new designer clothes ruined with their own blood. And who do they have to thank? A suicide bomber? Hamas? A corrupt Israeli police officer? No, his benefactor is much farther from home.

You.

By paying those taxes, and laying there with your ignorant ass in the air and voice muffled in the pillow of apathy, you are an accomplice to murder. The murder of Afghani children. The murder of Iraqi women. The murder of the American dream. And the murder of your own children, men and women sent away to defend a way of life long forgotten, only to come back in boxes or missing limbs, forever more a burden upon and reminder to the society that destroyed them.
You right-wing dicks call me "liberal". I prefer the term "aware" or dare I say "open-minded". I condemn abortion, favor capital punishment, am all about the death penalty, believe in God, and hate welfare. I say fuck the poor, fuck the old, and fuck health care for everybody, because that's my tax money, and I didn't earn it to carry anybody's sorry ass. But when I stand up from the crowd and call bullshit on our government, you blubber and point at the flag.

Shut your patriotic mouth.

Because if you were a patriot, if you knew what Memorial Day signified, if you had any pride as an American, you'd stand up and join the new rank. A batallion of pissed-off citizens who aren't going to play by the rules those pigs draft on Capitol Hill. An army of home-grown rednecks who are gonna tell 6-figured senators and ass-licking representatives the game is over. You want our money, you're gonna have to earn it, and we're gonna make sure you do right with it, or you're gonna find your happy elected ass in the unemployment line. And as for every soldier out there in the trench, realize what this war is, who's getting rich, and what you're fighting for. Turn off the safety, and look away from Baghdad, just for one second. Look at the television.

That monkey Bush is sitting on the other side of the world, in a safe White House, laughing at you.

Advice From The Underworld

Time once again for a monthly installment of advice, and I have to admit it folks, but anyone who's got nerve enough to actually TAKE my advice...well then, cheers to you mate. I personally wouldn't trust my advice further than I can throw a 50 pound sack of shit, but if you keep asking your questions, I'll keep answering them. Sit down on my pleather couch of psychoanalysis, because the Doctor is in.

Dear Johnny,
30 years, Johnny. 30 years old I am and already the doctors tell me that I need to quit drinking. Something about liver failure or some bullshit like that. I ask you, is it wrong for a man to enjoy the sight of a full bottle of Jim Beam than the sight of naked woman? After reading some of your articles, I can tell that you sir are a man of fine libationary tastes. Maybe I AM an alcoholic, Johnny, but goddamn he who be the one that tells me that I have a problem. I refuse to just take my doctor's advice lying down. So I come to you and ask...
...should I stop drinking?
-Drunk In Spokane


The Doctor's Advice:

Dear Drunk In Spokane,

Hmmmmmm. Should you stop drinking? Let's weigh the issue, shall we? Forget about all that nonsense the doctor fed you about liver failure and cirrhosis, all that medical mumbo-jumbo is just inconsequential to the real issues at hand you have to ponder. Becoming a tee-totaler has it's benefits, albeit not very many. By giving up drinking, you leave behind those blistering headaches just behind your eyes when you wake up after a long night of conquering the Mescal worm. You leave behind those strange and phantom injuries you discover on your body while taking that next day shower, wondering how in the hell you managed to break three toes and lose a thumbnail when all you did was go for happy hour at TGI-Fridays the day before. You leave behind a laundry list of enemies and broken hearts, all made in the process of stumbling around town drunk in various bars searching for that perfect pint of ale. Not only that, but you'll notice your wallet becoming significantly girthier, due to a sudden influx of unspent funds.

But fuck all that. My right ass cheek is never uncomfortable due to MY slim pickins' wallet. Those bruises and injuries? I consider them to be battle scars; prized war trophies forever reminding me that yes indeed, I survived another night. I drink alot, I admit it. In fact, lately, I drink waaaaaaaay too much. But who says that's a bad thing? Sober is no way to go through life, boring and dull with no passion to fuel you save for remembrance of the times when you were intoxicated. Some of the greatest writers and artists were complete slaves to the Devil's Piss, and I have yet to be enthralled by the works of some "straight-edge" visionary. Drinking breeds chaos, chaos breeds art, and art is beauty no matter what the cost. So while cirrhosis is no laughing matter, one fact remains in this cold brutal world we live in: We all have to die sometime. Might as well go out smiling and numb.

So live life like I do, fellow sick fuck drunkard. Your liver is the enemy, and at any moment, that slimy bastard is going crawl out of it's trench and charge your position with guns ablazing hellfire. Are you going to sit there in your foxhole, pissing your pants every time you hear its war-cry? FUCK NO! Get out there and slaughter that sum'bitch with 2000 rounds of 90 proof belt-fed fermented rye and distilled full metal jacket spirits! Do it for Johnny!

Walker, that is.


Dear Johnny,
I've been in love with my boyfriend for three years now, ever since High School. I graduated last year and even took a year off so he could graduate and we could go to the same college together. But he didn't get accepted to the one school that I really want to go to, and now he's going to take a year off and work before he tries again. Should I wait another year, and hope he gets accepted? Or do I go follow MY dreams and hope we don't fall out of touch? Please help me.
-Love Sick
The Doctor's Advice:


Dear Love Sick,
You're barking up the wrong tree, honey. My only advice for you is to give me your number, so I can BANG your feelings for your boyfriend out of that smart little head of yours. With my penis. But since that will probably never happen (and please, email me back if it WILL), I guess I'll try my hand at advice in the vein of romance. You're what? 19? 20 at the most? Add in one stupid boyfriend who can't even get accepted into the local community college, and you have an equation that only adds up to one of two things:

A broken heart or a well used vagina.

Because if you actually DO stick around another year to wait for this waterhead to "make some money", that relationship just isn't going to last. It can't. Eventually you'll get sick of waiting for this guy to get his act together, he'll probably just wind up banging another chick on the side, and eventually you both will part ways with you wondering why the fuck you wasted two years of your young adult life letting this douchebag spill his seed in that velvety slick womb of yours. No, I suggest you take the second option. Go to college this year in September, and start over. A long distance relationship just doesn't cut the mustard, but if you MUST, I guess you can try to keep in touch with that lazy no good boyfriend of yours. He'll move on, so I suggest you do the same. College is a special time in a young woman's life. There you will discover the joys of rampant alcoholism, sex with strangers, and the inevitable exhilarating shock of waking up to your first bladder infection which may or may not be gonorrhea. You will grow as a person, that much I assure you. And isn't that what you really want to go college for, to grow? Sticking around in your hometown just leads to stagnation, and eventually...kids. Oh the horror.

Well, that's it for this installment of advice. I'd answer more of you degenerate bastard's questions, but quite frankly, my liver is gathering outside of my stronghold. My only recourse? Drown that bastard in Stolichnya. Pray for me, folks, and send me your questions, and I might be sober enough to answer them,

The Myth Of The Moon

I'm sick and tired of the moon, the stars, and space in general. I'm not sure if it's due to me thinking America was duped into believing people actually walked on the moon, the fact I almost wasted 2-1/2 hours of my degenerate life watching Star Wars 3 (notice, I said almost...I'm not THAT stupid).

Even before I got to watch the Space Shuttle blow up on live T.V. back in the day, I've been saying that our fine government fucked us into believing they'd put people on the moon. I've been defending my conspiracy theory since I was like 9. When I was a kid I even got my ass kicked once or twice for spewing my garbage to older kids who had been brainwashed by NASA and their own parents, like the majority of people.

My mother once threatened to beat me with my fathers' belt if I spoke another negative word about her beloved bullet magnet JFK or his evil plot to deter good wholesome Americans from giving a damn about motherfuckers coming home in body bags and focus more on getting to the fucking moon.

I find it funny that every time one of the astronauts who "allegedly" walked on the moon is asked what it felt like to be on the moon, they always respond with some shit like "it was unbelievable," or "unreal." Maybe, just maybe, because that's exactly what it was - "UNREAL". A complete and total farce brought to you by a government (the greatest god damned government on Earth may I add before I start getting mail accusing me of being a Commie or some sort of Al Qaeda sympathizer or some shit) who was attempting to turn the attention of the general public in the opposite direction of where it was facing, and because there was no chance in hell we could or would let the Russians beat us into faking a moon landing of their own.

Now, I could go on and on about why I think we've never been to the moon, I could argue my reasoning or I could go online and provide you with hours upon hours of research to prove or disprove my beliefs. But, you got me fucked up if you think I'm gonna spend good whack off time to find anything other than good ole sinful pornography. Geek moon landings versus whores spread eagle rubbing shit on each others clits? Guess what wins that match every time.

So, truthfully I have no reasoning to believe we have or haven't been to the moon. I just don't think we ever made it up to that bitch. Is the technology there? Probably nowadays, but 40 years ago? Do we have the people capable to get there? Probably. Have we been up there? Maybe, or maybe not, I do know for a fact that my ass has never been there, nobody I know has ever been there, and nobody that I know knows anybody that has been there. For that reason and that reason alone, I call bullshit.

It's a free country. Believe whatever the fuck you want to believe. I just think that the powers that be have had an agenda of lies that has been fed to the naive public, who are more than happy to look the other way. Now, I know that the government hasn't had an elaborate lie in a long time; c'mon, we all know we're going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even if we do have to put those motherfuckers there ourselves. Rest assured, they've got something on the back burner simmering, just waiting for the right time.

Now, I can hear it already. "John, you're fucked out of your mind again; there is no way our government would be able to pull something like that off". For the sake of mankind I wish I could truly believe that. Until the day my ass walks on it or at least until one of those boy band fuckers comes back and tells me he went to Uranus or the moon or wherever the fuck that pussy was going, I refuse to buy into this moon walking propaganda.

As I'm sitting here, writing this editorial and taking another giant step toward journalistic history, I would really like to believe that we've walked on the moon but to be totally honest, I could give a fuck either way and I'm simply spewing my ballyhoo to give you something to read.

But don't get me started about the time I saw a UFO.

Hard Times With Soft Rock

The fickle finger of fate spun my radio dial, then cruelly ripped the knob off the faceplate.

The finger was actually on my friend's drunken hand, but we knew it was fate when the needle landed on the local housewife mellow-rock station. They play the kind of music you forget even while you listen to it, the schlock that blends into the background of your life and stays there - mercifully camouflaged in the soundtrack of wasted youth - if it weren't for the fatigued repetition of last decade's hits. It's not lack of cock that makes housewives desperate: it's this music filling minivans with the same darkness that creeps through lost minds as they slip into aspirin comas and lukewarm bathwater.

It fills my car like a fog and I turn the windshield wipers on under a brilliant sky, but the suffocating dullness is inside the windshield, soothing me like a lethal injection. It doesn't hurt, it's not sharp like whiskey stealing your soul or burning like smoke hitting the back of your throat, but it's there and the beast is patient. I listen to the Backstreet Boys, Jewel, Prince, Human League, music from the last fifteen years and straight out of the forgotten back drawer of the recording industry's filing cabinet. "But I like Jewel," some might say, "and Dido's hot." Yeah, she is, and she's got a pretty voice, but without Eminem punctuating her refrains she gets a little tedious while I'm trying to cruise around town. No one respects the old factory system pumping Bad English, "When I see you smile." There's no thumping bass in "100 Years" by Five For Fighting.

And under no circumstances, outside of the very narrow world of back closet perversions, should a grown man be observed rocking out to Avril Lavigne.

The obvious solution is to pop a CD in the dash and return to homeostasis. All things being equal, burning a mix of MP3s is the cheaper alternative to fixing the knob. It makes sense. So do a lot of things we never do, like quitting smoking, or not driving so fast, or wearing different socks when the ones we have on work alright. Whoever can explain the concrete wall between "should" and "do" will hit upon the greatest psychological breakthrough since Freud coined the phrase "anal fixation."

Do The Cranberries still record music?

I was rolling south through the city's colon when a red light stopped me and a tricked-out Honda sailed alongside. The windows were down, the system was up, and the three guys crammed inside stared me up and down. It was the social sizing up that a fat kid gives a hamburger, or a snowboarder gives a hill dusted with fresh powder. I looked like fun, and they looked bored, the light freezing us in a pregnant moment ready to burst into violence. They turned their system way past healthy levels, their rusty exhaust system vibrating like a tambourine in a Southern Baptist choir, the bass concussion pushing my aerial back and forth with invisible punches. They lured me into a game of Break the Eardrums like cold blooded professionals.

I answered with my own system, door-mounted three inch speakers straining under the impossible treble of Kelly Clarkson screeching "Since You Been Gone" They tweaked the bass to drown Kelly and their laughter. Other drivers rolled their windows up as their vehicles began shaking like toys in an earthquake. I spun the volume knob, staring them down with my coldest gaze when they dealt the killing blow…

The assholes shut off their music. Completely.

I was left in a pack of heavy traffic, windows rolled down, speakers in their death throws blasting "Since You Been Gone" for all the world.

I fucking hate soft rock.

You and Your Stem - A Comparative Study

"I made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money to promote science which destroys life in order to save life is - I'm against that."
- George W. Bush, Chief Executive Cocksucker

To tell you the truth, I'm stricken somewhat silent at this one.

And the reasons are not as obvious as you may think. But if you've spent any time at all in my madhouse, a couple of truths should be acknowledged. First, I have a special place for W in my heart...actually about eighteen inches south of my heart, right at the end of my colon. Second, with the exception of the occasional whore piece, I've largely abstained from voicing my opinion on any political matter (sans the quarterly W-bashing). If we hold these truths to be self-evident, you people should know that when I step into the crosshairs to throw down on George, I mean hard business.

And hard business, my dear friends, is any involving killing and religion.

Because for all that cockswinging and Texas talk resonating from the White House, our fearless leader is far from fearless. Indeed, with the exception of Cocaine and Education, the only word which commands George's complete attention is God. The God that appointed W to cleanse the earth of Allah-worshipping infidels. The God that empowered the USA to appropriate fossil fuels from distant exotic lands for our driving pleasure. And the God that condemns stem-cell research as the murder of tiny unborn humans to save the lives of living breathing humans.

Problem is, folks, I actually agree with the fucker.

Not on all that killing and stealing business. No, even in my newfound sobriety I haven't fallen that far to the right. But something about this whole embryo farming and dissection idea just doesn't seem quite right. Perhaps some latent Anglo-Saxon Christianity has gotten a hold of me. Perhaps the fact that major organ development begins within a few days of conception and there is a detectable heartbeat not so long after, somewhat blurs the lines between "embryo" and "fetus" and "neonate". Whatever the case, I have opinions, and being that I'm writing this, I get to say whatever I want. For example, should I say:

George W. Bush is a murdering fuckhole.

I will surely be rewarded a stream of vicious email in defense of our American President, with an occasional whimper of "Hell, yeah!" support from some random anarchist. But rather than attack science as basis for this wrongdoing, I might opine on the philosophical arguments surrounding sustained life by artificial means and the value of a "potential" person. Fuck all that shit. So before I get all vindictive on you, allow me to explain in layman's terms because, after all, we are laymen. Let's take a closer look at this:

"I made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money to promote science which destroys life in order to save life is - I'm against that."

Yes, emphasis added, because I want you to see how George has carefully qualified his objection. Worded in this manner, your President has simultaneously condemned killing in the name of science to promote life. And neatly leaves killing in the name of God on his list of "things that are OK to do". This sort of logic is exactly the sort I would expect from either a brilliant public relations executive, or an ignorant backwoods politician. But for argument's sake, let's just nod and agree.

Because if we can agree that killing to promote science is bad, then we must question the morals of our administration. Color me peculiar, but I fail to see how actions such as using laser-guided precision armaments to bombard Babylon back to Bronze Age, or processing crude Iraqi oil into 93 Octane don't "promote science". Nor do I see how carefully orchestrating the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center avoids some inadvertent promotion of science. Hell, if we were to take a good close look at the use of "taxpayers' money" to destroy life to save life, methinks George W. would have quite a bit of explaining to do. So if we revisit my earlier premise:

George W. Bush is a murdering fuckhole.

The least we can do is flesh out the argument a bit.

George W. Bush is a self-righteous born-again drug addict and alcoholic, who in his narcissistic delusion has taken his "charge to keep" and decided to go on a world tour.

While ignoring the Vatican and most of his own countrymen in attacking the Middle East, he thumps his Bible to garner approval and stop perhaps the only scientific hope mankind has to perpetuate life. His haphazard record of Texas execution, defense spending, misappropriating our Social Security funds, incarcerating random people without due process, and fabricating reason for war is the mindset of a borderline sociopath with neither foresight nor consideration of consequence. Only a raging cokehead with religious zeal could possibly pull-off this string of lies and cover-ups, while duping some 200 million people to believe what he says.

Or maybe Christ himself.

Who woulda thunkit?

Desensitized Daydreams

Desensitization: 1. To render insensitive or less sensitive. 2. To make emotionally insensitive or unresponsive, as by long exposure or repeated shocks.

There came the unmistakable hollow grinding of plastic on concrete from the street below. I rushed to my window and saw a kid lying in the street next to a moped, wheels still spinning, plastic parts spread on the concrete. He only lay there a few seconds, then rose to his feet, dusted himself off, and took stock of the situation.

Body intact? Check. Moped? Missing the left side mirror, various parts, large pieces of plastic. A pool of some motor fluid grew slowly, proof that the Chinese manufacturer never intended it to be ridden sideways. Or at all. The kid cocked his leg back and kicked it, twice, four times, the scooter shuddering with each blow. Then he picked it up, pointed it downhill, and coasted away, leaving plastic shards and an oil spot on the street.

This was passing amusement, and I soon returned to the day's chores of writing and editing, staring idly at the four way intersection down the street and wondering if anything interesting would go sailing into a telephone pole today.

Why is it curious to watch accidents? Why is it more normal than repulsive to watch traffic slow down as it passes a well-off-the-road accident so the gawkers can get an eyeful? Why is it normal for us to curse them for their twisted voyeurism, then tap our brakes and turn our heads in sheepish curiosity?

There's something changing in the state of Denmark, though I'm not yet sure if it's rotten. Every major revelation carries the question: "Is this a new age of perspective...or do I have a new perspective, with my age?" We only get twelve months experience being any one age: eighteen, twenty one, thirty, forty seven... So when we curse the latest generation of kids or shake our heads at the follies of the generation before us, we have to wonder: is the world different, or, as we're always changing...is it us?

I first started visiting gory, obscene websites (I won't name names...they're not paying me, fuckers) years ago, and got hooked immediately. There was a stretch of about eight hours where I abused a T-1 connection to look at every picture and video posted on these sites, and something happened in my brain. Maybe a sickness took seed. Perhaps somewhere, a devil got its horns. Whatever it is, it marked a progressive change when the macabre became amusement and the unclean, divine.

My girlfriend found her way into my bed a few months ago, and while her nearly perfect body graced my sheets, I was somewhere else in my mind. The moment was all she needed, but when I closed my eyes, I saw a midget gangbang fisting away to the beat of German heavy metal. This was my happy place, where mind and body met as one despite the distance between.

Desensitization. You can build up tolerance to caffeine and nicotine, illicit drugs and prescription medication, condition your body to perform more, faster, better. It takes more to excite a skydiver than just a low altitude static line jump. They freefall, they take up BASE jumping, while drug addicts shoot more heroin, fat chicks eat more food, marathon runners push for another mile. We like the envelope pushed: more graphic, more macabre, more hardcore, more, more, more.

And so I sit here, alone in the dark with her unreturned phone calls blinking on my answering machine, looking at more train wreck videos and suicide bomber photos.

But so do you.

Operation Stranglehold

Who smokes pot in America? Lots of people from every demographic. Who speeds? Damn near everyone. Illegal parking? Illegal music downloads? You have the right to keep and bear arms, if you meet narrow criteria, wait for several days, buy no more than a set number per month...and giving a shotgun to your son on his seventeenth birthday is a felony that breaches several laws. Yet, this right "shall not be infringed." God help you if you live in the People's Republic of California.

There isn't much troop quartering going on (3rd Amendment), but the government can requisition your house and land, pay you minimally, and bulldoze it the next day for a highway or sewage treatment plant.

Raise your hand if you've ever had an unlawful search or seizure (4th Amendment). How long do these damned celebrity trials drag on? How long do you sit in prison while the DA takes his sweet time trying to end life as you know it? So much for "the accused shall enjoy a right to a speedy and public trial," (6th Amendment).

We're so far from the Bill of Rights, and so knee-deep in bureaucracy, we can't see the free sunshine anymore. Censorship is rampant, but as it checks free speech, so is it checked as well. Anti-homosexual groups are allowed to display the most graphic, vile, and defamatory signs and slogans you can imagine on public street corners. But if you walk outside the bar and yell obscenities at a lamppost, you'll be arrested for disturbing the peace, or being a public nuisance.

The difference is one of power: you can't do anything about it. The protestors? They're pissed off enough to take off work, make signs, and raise hell in an organized group. Governments are historically bad about managing organized groups of dissenters (See also: Kent State Massacre, Boston Massacre, the American Revolution). Step on them, and they'll bond together, make signs, and raise hell. It behooves the police and politicians to let the groups do their things, so long as "their things" leave the government the hell alone. Just keep their energy directed elsewhere.

Why can't you buy beer when you're twenty? What difference does the week make before your twenty first birthday? European countries let kids drink at whatever age suits them, and have far fewer occurrences of DUI-related deaths and much less of a public drain from alcoholism than we do with our draconian booze regulations. Why can't you buy cigarettes before you're eighteen? The laws aren't to protect the kids who get booze and cigarettes, and a lot worse shit, anyway. They're there to set precedent, to make us comfortable with a certain degree of law. We've all broken some bullshit law like those...and we're all criminals. Thus, when the government wants to get us somehow, they selectively enforce the laws we're braking...we're already in the trap. The government cannot stand when its people are truly free, as a building cannot stand on a foundation of individual pebbles. Free people are unpredictable, and might challenge the system.

Who is actually lobbying with full gusto to lower the drinking age, or do away with the cigarette buying age? Kids want these things gone, but the government doesn't have to listen to kids, and pissed off seventeen year olds are historically bad at organizing legislative initiatives. Thus, the government is safe criminalizing a huge segment of our youth...and breaking them into the notion of being criminals. Later, when it's time to reign in the undesirables, they'll be so used to breaking laws that they won't notice the umpteen violations the government uses to get them. Al Capone was popped for tax evasion. This is how the government works: they find a way, or make one.

Why must we go through the Security Screening Olympics every time we board an airplane? Not to make the skies safer...but because the government capitalized (we have a capitalist government, after all) on national hysteria to exercise another huge measure of control over its citizens. We put up with it while the Twin Towers were still smoking. Damn near four years later, we're seeing it for the sum of the bullshit that it is...but it's too late. So we bitch on the internet, complain to family, sneer at high school dropouts in TSA uniforms, but ultimately take our shoes off and check our dignity with our luggage.

There are checks all through the system, though, where the determined citizen can get out of trouble. You can appeal tickets, address zoning boards, get variances for whatever you need. They tell you that this is to preserve your liberty, to safeguard freedom...bullshit. If you were truly free and regulated only by that regulation which is absolutely necessary for the good of all, than the speed limit would be discretionary, and you would never need to apply for a variance or forgiveness or have a buddy-judge "fix" a damned thing. Those restrictions wouldn't be there in the first place. So why are they there now?

If you're motivated enough to walk up to the Lieutenant on duty and tell him you won't pay your parking ticket, you're probably motivated enough to actually do something about the real problem: the government overstepping its boundaries. But, instead of attacking the system, they cleverly channel your energies into complicated (or just scary) appeal processes. In the end, you usually find yourself pretty well off, and frustrated enough, tired enough, and safe enough, to not push through and attack the entire system. Thus, the integrity of the system remains.

What's the ultimate vision? Complete, 1984-style domination? Who knows. At the moment, the government is safe from being overthrown by its people...it's disarmed us, stolen so much of our money as to make major political or physical revolt infeasible, and through the Patriot Act and many other, less-known initiatives, implemented a complex monitoring system to head off trouble. It learned its own lesson: our country was formed by angry men with money, guns, and aggravation at an oppressive government. To keep Washington, DC from being the next British Colonial Figure, Congress has taken our guns, money, and national spirit, replaced them with television, complacency, and tightly controlled news agencies (ever wonder why all the "mainstream" news sources look alike?). We couldn't revolt if we wanted to.

Not that we want to. There's 214 channels on Satellite TV, a lifetime of porn on the internet, and cheap booze in the refrigerator.

Smile...things won't change, even if you try

Pressure Bidet

I've had very few things in my ass. Some suppositories, a thermometer, toilet paper, a bitches' tongue, and a finger or two. Oh, and a 9 inch plastic tube. For the sake of all that is holy, I swear that I made her pull her fingers out of my ass as soon as I came, but that is neither here nor there. As for the plastic tube, there is a perfectly good explanation why a 29 year old, heterosexual man has a plastic tube anywhere near his ass.

So I have this friend. Is he gay? I don't think so, but it's possible, I suppose. In any regard, this motherfucker started talking about all these parasites and worms that live in my intestines and how all this shit in my guts is eventually going to bring my demise. I just blew it off as this dick watching too many Japanese shiteating whores online, but the more he talked, the more I started wondering, and then that's when I was showed what I might have up in me. I was suddenly determined to find out how I could clean my insides. Strangely enough, this same buddy had most of the information I was looking for. He told me we should get some colon hydrotherapy. I was immediately intimidated by him using the word "colon" and "we" in the same sentence.

"What the fuck is colon hydrotherapy?"
"Well, I think it's kinda like getting water sprayed in your ass then that washes all the bad shit out."
"Kinda like a bidet?"
"Yeah, just like that!"

Well, easy enough I thought. And just like that, the very next afternoon we we're off to get our colons cleaned. Now I don't even throw out the garbage without being high, so the whole car ride there, that's exactly what I did. Got high. The office was in a high rise building on the first floor with a huge sign on the glass doors reading "COLON CARE". We walked in and were greeted by an old lady who may have been hot back in the day but was nowhere near as hot as the bitch on the places website. We started filling out paperwork, then she says:

"I'll take you back first," pointing at me.

So I follow this old broad to a back room. I walk into the room and the first thing I notice is this ominous structure that was a cross between a massage table, a doctors' office bed, and a toilet. "That's the LIBBE station" (Lower Intestinal Bottom Bowel Evacuation), she said.

There was also a plastic glove and some packs of petroleum jelly sitting on some thin paper like sheet. A rather large plastic tube was sticking out of this toilet part of the bed. I noticed a pipe coming out of the bed with a good two feet of it being clear along with a mirror right behind the clear piece. I was somewhat in awe, not knowing exactly what I'd gotten myself into.

"Okay hun, you're going to take you pants and underwear off,"
"I don't wear underwear, ma'am."
"Well, neither do I."

What the fuck? Not even my lame attempts to be funny were making me feel any more at ease. She continues, "So, once you take your clothes off, you jump on the bed, spread your legs open and you're gonna wanna put the glove on and lube the entrance to your colon, you put some on the rectal tube as well. Once you're nice and lubed you want to glide the rectal tube into your colon past your second sphincter muscle." What? I'm high as fuck, and this old broad is talking about lube and rectal and sphincter muscles.

"Umm, I wasn't aware that I would have to put anything in there." I explained.
"Oh, don't worry babe, it is a completely safe procedure, I do it all the time."

Well shit, if this old bitch can do it, so can I, I thought to myself. She asks me to cover myself with this paper thin ass sheet and press the call button when I was ready for her to come back in and that she would start the water after some more instructions.

I start undressing and I'm standing in front of a door size mirror wearing nothing but an under shirt and a pair of socks. My penis, sensing something very odd was about to take place, decides to shrink up and head for home. I think to myself that I need to find new friends. What to do? What to do? Fuck it. I march over to the bed like thing, throw one leg over, and sit spread eagle while I put on my glove. I squeeze the jelly onto my fingers and proceed to lube the tube, then my ass. I started to feel gay, but nowhere near what I was about to feel, I slide down and proceeded to guide a plastic tube roughly two inches into my ass. What the fuck was I suppose to do next, I couldn't even think straight. Oh yeah, cover up and press the call button. Holy good goddamned fuck, the sheet was at my feet and well out of my reach. For me to reach it, I would have to raise up, meaning that tube would go deeper in my ass. I tried everything I could to grab it, but failed. Fuck it, this tube wasn't going any further in my ass, and I pressed the call button. The old woman came back in the room to find a grown ass man with his hands covering his cock and balls, lying with a tube in his ass.

"Sorry ma'am, I couldn't reach the sheet, with it not going in further." I said. Unfazed, she shook her head and covered me up. Thank god for professionalism. She starts talking again,
"Alright hun, I'm gonna turn on the water, you're gonna feel it start going into your intestines, when you're full it's gonna feel like you need to go to the bathroom, when you feel this, push, the water will stop flowing and all the toxins will start coming out and they will flow out of the pipes and into the Dallas sewers where you'll never have to see them again. The water will automatically starts again once you've flushed everything; you'll continue to do this for approximately 55 minutes, press the button if you need anything, do you have any questions?"

I had all sorts of shit I wanted to ask, but my brain couldn't comprehend what my mouth wanted to say, so I just shook my head.

So, I'm laying there with water going into my ass and into my intestines. I start getting that feeling where it feels like you have to take a shit. Fuck it, here goes nothing. I push and I hear the distinct sound of diarrhea coming from my ass. I look down at the clear pipe and all this nasty stuff starts shooting by. At first, it's just dirty pee color water, then pieces of shit start flowing by, and then chunks of who the fuck knows what. I repeat this for the next 20 minutes and each and every time the material coming out of my ass is starting to get more disgusting than the previous time. "Holy fuck, what in the fuck was that" I said out loud to myself. It was something that looked like half a shoe lace wrapped around a tootsie roll. Just then I heard a knock at the door and June, the old broad came walking in talking some shit like "Is everything okay?" She pulls out a massager and starts massaging my stomach saying something like this will help the intestinal walls release things easier. My intestines were just about full again and I was ready to release some more shit but didn't want to do it in front of the old woman. She continued massaging and talking until I could no longer hold it in. I let loose with the old woman in the room. She didn't even blink, just kept massaging. As my ass started to fill up again, my mind started to think of the old woman giving me head, then my dick decided to come out of his hole to see what all the fuss was about. Now, not only do I have an old woman massaging my stomach, a tube in my ass but a semi-boner as well. My dick finally went back down once the old woman went on her way. I continued the process for about 25 more minutes, seeing more and more horrendous things come out of my ass. I was relieved when I heard the timer go off. The old woman came in with some final instructions and I slithered my lubed ass the fuck off the rectal tube. I cleaned my hands, my jelly smothered ass and got dressed.

It was over.

Then I come to find out it takes five or six times for it to be fully cleansed. Just then, my friend walks out into the lobby, leans in and says the damnest god-damned thing:

"Dude, I think I have worms, I swear I saw worms in the pieces of shit that flowed by."

This was it, the final straw. I was making new friends immediately. I've since been asked what I felt like afterwards, and it's the same answer every time: "Gay...very gay!"

But fuck y'all, my colon is cleaner than yours.

What'll Ya Have?

It was just after a brutally long day of blue collar work, sweat stains forming a yellowish acrid diary of what I've done and how much ass I've busted; the whole damned day now painted on my armpits like some foul smelling Rand McNally. Rush hour traffic hits my senses like a deftly swung ballpeen hammer in the hands of a cattle butcher right to my temple and the headache that takes up residence just behind my right eye all but GUARANTEES my next course of action.

Bar.

NOW.

Call it rampant alcoholism. Call it the product of a 5th generation hereditary monkey on my back. Call it whatever the fuck you like, but after 9 and 1/2 hours in 96 degree weather busting your hump for pocket change and a pitiful excuse of a 401K, you'd call it the same thing that I do: Sweet relief in the form of fermented grain.

Work truck tires squeal against the loose gravel as I pulled into the first drinking establishment I laid my eyes. Little Zeke's Social Club. Private club, one dollar to join, as were most bars down here in Charleston County were want to do. And believe me, when I stepped into the cavernous air conditioned cave that was Little Zeke's, my prayers were answered. A dead and silent bar, save for the soft muted melody of Robert Johnson on the jukebox singing about beating his woman to death and burying her while the Devil chuckles softly in his ear. Bliss, my friends, bliss. I saddled up to the ancient oak bar and sat waiting for the bartender to finish up whatever it was that he was doing in the back and start poisoning my liver and cleansing my soul.

"What da' hells you want is, huh?", croaked the voice of a man who's been smoking unfiltered Pall Malls since time immortal. The bartender slowly shuffled his ancient frame towards me from behind the bar, skin as black as a monitor lizard and just as wrinkled and scaly. He looked ancient, and if not for the white puff of hair that shot haphazardly out of the side of his John Deere hat, in the dim lights and shadows of the bar, he could have been a wraith. Probably just shy of 80 pounds, I swear, looking into those deep red rheumatoid eyes was like having the whole humble pie shoved down my throat. I managed to light a cigarette and ask for a Crown on the rocks before he croaked in with, "Six fitty, boss. Bit early to be doin' the drinkin', eh boss?"

Not at all, man. Not early enough.

"We don' get too many white folk in here. Just sayin' is all.", as he looked me over like I was some four tittied alien. Just needed a drink, is all. Figured this place was as good as any. He nodded and mumbled something in Gullah, then proceeded to pour himself a shot of reliable Ol' Crow. My kind of bartender. For another three hours, he proceeded to tell me his life's story, and it was a story more worthy than anything ever posted on here, that's for damn sure. But I will do my best to faithfully regale you all with the sordid and tragic tales of William Robertsm, otherwise known as Billy Roots. Blue's musician, gambler, thief, father of countless, husband to none, murderer, hero, and now in his 76th year of life, bartender extraordinaire.

So there I sat, audience to a grizzled old red-bone boozehound who's toothless maw opened up into cavernous chamber of secrets, and let his ancient weathered "wisdom" spill forth. During the course of our conversation, I sat fixated on his gums. Black as midnight coal, with veins of blue peeking in and out like a gold mine of gingivitis. A snaggled yellow nicotine stained tooth was it's sole occupant, his tongue the tooth's constant lover because as he rambled on and on, it would dart back and forth across that tooth like a blind man seeking his way around an unfamiliar room. Billy Roots was his name, raping life like a fat old drunken sow was his game. That old black son-of-a-bitch served up the stiffest Crown and water in history. Over the course of four hours, he would tell me the strange and sordid tale that was his life. Tragic, miserable, dark fated, and yet wonderfully chaotic all at once, this motherfucker became the standard upon which all other bartenders would be judged in my eyes.

I feel, that if you're a bartender, it's your duty, nay, your responsibility not only to serve up a stiff drink, but in the process also keep us amused. Perhaps a witty anecdote, a filthy joke, a tale of the ages; I don't know, something to keep me coming back to give your ass some money. Now I understand during a busy night, that sort of thing just isn't possible. But for customers like me, who enjoy the solace of a dimly lit bar in the afternoon, perhaps one or two other drunks like myself keeping you busy, at the very least somehow mask the reality that indeed I do have a drinking problem. And Billy Roots did just that. Wisdom of the ages, my friends...

Billy Roots on:

Love:
"Love be the Devil. Don't you ever forget that, son. Love is truly the Devil manifest in the form of an emotion. How else can you 'splain how a man in love can kill another man over a woman? That shit be just a nicer way of saying you wanna fuck. Stickin' your little dick in some woman ain't no love, boy. Seein' red when another man stares at your woman with the same eyes you had when you saw her ass shakin' and bakin' in that cute yellow dress you first saw her in ain't love. It's just human fucking nature. Like your scientists in them old white folk schools say, just natural chemicals swirling around in yo' head...givin' you the illusion of something other than what it is. The Devil ain't got a hold on THIS motherfucker, that's fo damn sho'. So go ahead, son, go ahead and lose your mind over a piece of pussy. I'm gettin' too old for that shit anyhow."

Murder:
"You lookin' at me, and I know what you thinkin', boy. Old black man never done did hurt nobody. Sheeeeet...back in my prime I was harder than times in '29. Bad attitude and booze never did make me a kind man, I tell the truth right there. Time was, I must have been no older than 17-18 when I broke God's most important commandment. Back livin' in the Delta, we folk had three things: Blues, Booze, and Broads. I took quite easily to the harmonica, and my boys and me could tear up them juke joints, son, I ain't lyin'. I always had a penchant for the pussy, and playin' blues was just pure sex. It oozed sex. Pussy was there for the takin' when I was growin' up, and now when after all these years and all the hardship I put everyone and myself through...pussy and a quick temper may have been the reason I know the Devil is keeping a seat warm for Billy right by his side in Hell. That fateful night, she had thighs that could blind out the sun, and after watching her give bat those pretty hazel eyes at me all night, I sure as shit knew I was gonna knee deep in that ass before the sun rose. After our set was done, and the whiskey ran dry, I took her back to her place. We smoked some of that weed, and got down to business. Goddamn it was hot in her house, that much I will always remember till the day my lungs stop breathin'. So hot, sweat was pourin' into my eyes, making the whole room fuzzy and that much more like a dream. But the pussy was so damned good, boy. Like going back into the womb it was, so warm and wonderful that nothing since then has compared to my sweet sweet Ophelia's pussy. I should have stopped though when I heard the front door open. I should have stopped when I heard her husband whistling a spiritual and calling out her name like he must have done every night after coming home from work. I should have stopped and jumped right out that window, ass naked for the moon and the sky to see.

But I didn't.

Like I said, love is the Devil. And when he burst through that bedroom door eyein' me dick deep in Orphelia's ass, body shivering in lust like a crab at low tide, everything turned slow motion like. I remember him hollerin' murder at the both of us, and Ophelia sat there wide eyed like a doe. He came chargin' at me with a big ol' pig sticker he pulled out of his boot. Naked as the day Momma brought me into this world, I jumped up on the bed and kicked that son of a bitch right his mouth, feeling teeth come loose and bone cracking in his jaw. He stuck me good though, right in my thigh, but I hit him in the mouth a few more times with my fist and started choking that motherfucker for good measure. Oh, we tussled and rustled that's for damn sho', but a man in love is more dangerous than a man cornered. That black motherfucker had me but good, laying on top of with me with his knees on my chest and his fingers around my throat, Orphelia screamin' bloody murder. But you lookin' at ME and not him, right? Damn right. I pulled that shiv out of my leg and before I passed out and took a one way trip to Hell, I shoved that fuckin' thing right in his throat. He looked at me wild-eyed and gurgled something I'll never know, and crashed into the wall. Murder is a messy act. Alls I remember is blood, and lots of it. I ran and ran and ran, butt naked all the way back to my brother's house, maybe 20 miles through woods and swamp. After that day, I left Mississippi and never went back.

Murder is a funny thing, I reckon. I guess if a man needs to die, you do it. Simple as that."

White Folk:
"I'll never understand you people. Time was, you folk did everything in your power to keep my folk and our ways of life as a far away from yours. I watched cousins and childrens and mothers get attacked by dogs and sprayed with fire hoses all because we wanted to eat at the same damned diners and go to the same damned schools. I watched nigga's get hung from cypress trees, and I listened to the mother's of little girls who've been shot in the woods like dogs cry and curse your folks names, all because you is white and we be black.

Now, white kids wanna be like us and your women wanna fuck us. *laughs out loud* I'll never understand you cocksuckers."

Raising Children:
"You got kids yet? No? Good. That's a smart way to live, boy. I got kids. Sheeeeet, I got kids all right. By my last count, 14 in all. You wanna know the secret to raising that many kids?
Visit them, make them smile, kiss the momma on the cheek, and get the fuck out of there. They only gonna grow up hatin' you anyways, so what's the point in stickin' around all day and dealin' with shitty diapers and hungry mouths to feed? Billy Roots got more important things to deal with...

...like visiting my other kids on the other side of town."

A Good Drink:
"Crown Royal, Ol' Crow, Jack Daniels, Wild Turkey...shit, son, a whiskey by any name will still make the day a little bit brighter. Shit'll make you crazy, make you fall in love, make you kill a man, make you respect yo'self, make you hate yo'self, and make you laugh like you never laughed before; all these things, over the course of one night. So drink up, Danny, drink up and forget the troubles of today. Because come tomorrow, you're better off not remembering what happened yesterday anyway. Now get out of here, boy...you're gonna scare off all the black folk and ruin my reputation."

And just like that, I was drunk and had forgotten all about the troubles of the day I had at work. In the end, I guess that's what a good bartender should truly be. Someone to serve you upan anecdote and a shot. Someone to make you feel better about yourself.

Here's to Billy Roots...see you in Hell you crazy old son of bitch.

Sponsor My Wedding

I no longer fear hell. What religion has made me mortally afraid of, thanks to a day spent between a church and an Elk's Lodge, are weddings. The tedium, the boredom interspersed with sheer horror. The pomp. The senseless decadence. Trying to squeeze a Jager-fart out on a wooden pew. I was surrounded by derelicts who fit somewhere in Darwin's evolution-model between the monkey stage and the stone age, so old they had to be reminded who it was they were waiting to see, and just how that person was related to them through blood, law, and happenstance.

Alone in a sea of faces, abandoned on Mike's family's side of the aisle while the rest of our friends overcrowd a front pew, I choked on the smell of the dearly not-yet departed who smacked their dentures like cows pacing a muddy field. Bad enough to be abandoned, worse to be stuck here, but the true horror of the day laid in ambush for Chris' father-in-law when the bills come due at the end of the month.

Now some people are designed to be husbands, or wives, or get off driving nails through their scrotums. To each their own. Lucky for Chris, he's the husband type, which made him a liability on drinking nights, though a sure sober ride home. His wife, Jenna, is the marriage type as well, so that they superglued their lives together for eternity wasn't frightening.

But the bill for it was.

I talked to Jenna's dad halfway through the reception—and his third bottle of wine. He put a gorilla-arm around me and slurred something about pride and hope, love, and I think some story about strippers, but what dropped my jaw was when he dropped the figure of $20,000 into the conversation: the day he lost his only daughter to a frat boy cost him twenty grand. The man needed something stronger than wine, so I picked up a round of shots at the open bar.

I was still taking the fur off the dog from the previous night's last-hurrah. He was just starting a record-shattering bender.

I meditated over free booze on that figure: $20,000. That's a new car. 100 nights of $200 bar tabs. More than the entire Gross Domestic Product of some third world countries. Or, one wedding.

The odds have it that some day I'll take Chris's spot at the altar, staring down the aisle at two family trees entwining around a succubus in white silk. Someone will have to pay for it, and I sure as hell don't want to be beholden to someone's dad for that kind of money. Long into a tumbler of straight Goldschlager, I hit upon a glorious idea: corporate sponsorship. It works for NASCAR drivers, outdoor concert promoters, and professional sports teams. Why can't it work for me?

Everyone spends interminable time staring at the front of a church, waiting for the damn thing to start, and there are plenty of flat spaces for advertising space—the front of the altar prime among them. CBS would jump at the chance to plaster their logo up there for a captive audience. Bridal supply stores could trade whatever the hell it is that costs so much money for some well placed ads on the front of the choir loft, and the local gas fireplace store would pay top dollar to sponsor the candelabras. If I could get Budweiser to sponsor the reception with beverages and food in exchange for exclusive advertising rights on napkins, signs, and a scrolling marquee by the buffet, I could get the second half completely free. Bag a Trojan sponsorship for the honeymoon, and we'd be set.

You can get dirt cheap haircuts at the cosmetology school, and the same principle probably applies to the clergy. Instead of dropping a couple hundred in “donations” to hire a priest, there are probably a good number of seminary students itchin' to get their hitchin' merit badge for school credit, saving even more money. With the right marketing and sponsorship drives, I might even be able to turn a profit on the damn thing!

Now, to find the right woman to live ever after in capitalist bliss...

The Diplomat

I have a dream. Not a dream like Martin Luther King, but a dream nonetheless. It's a simple dream because I'm a simple man. My dream consists of one thing and one thing only: Having a safe, friendly, cozy environment to purchase the Devils Weed. If there was such a place, I wouldn't have to pussyfoot around in the ghettos.

Being the well-travelled man that I am, and seeing as how I like to share stories with you, my loyal fans, here's one that dates back to 1995. North Texas was the place. My day started off with a phone call telling me that the weed house would be closed for the day because the crack house down the street had mysteriously burned down and the block was hot. Real fucking mystery, I'm sure. To keep me from having to spend anymore time than absolutely necessary looking for the only thing that will keep me from falling into a Level 2 Bipolar episode, I decided to hit the sleaziest, slimiest, dirt bag filled place I knew.

The Car Wash.

Why is it, that most car washes are so goddamned shady? I don't like to frequent the place in question because it's always only a matter of time before some shit goes down, but fuck it, there I went anyway. I jumped in car #2 which is kept just barely running for situations like this one. Like the majority of cars at this car wash, #2 sports a set of rims far more expensive than the cost of the entire car. But when in Rome...

I turn the corner and immediately get hit up with gang signs. What the fuck? I hadn't even parked and already motherfuckers are mean mugging. The car wash is a lot like Tarrant County Jail (so I've heard), with all the races off in their own little sections with very little intermingling between any two groups. I pull in and find an open bay to park in, a money spot. Immediately, the smell of the good green ganja lingering in the air hit my nose. Fuck yeah, I thought. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a sack and get the fuck out before the first cop's even start making their rounds in the area.

I decide to hit my Mexican brothers up first. It's kinda weird, none of these fucking assholes have a job, but yet each one of them has thousands of dollars worth of hydraulic equipment in their cars. I spot a motherfucker I know from around the way and ask:

"Hey homes, where's the green at?"
"Say, I thought you said you were gonna let me paint your car?"
"Nah dog, you know I'm scared you're gonna put some big ass Virgin Mary or some shit on my hood."
"Orale, that's fucked up kid, I dunno about the weed, my cousin Creeper said he was coming through with an elbow but the shit's already hot ese, some fucking mayate already got his ass kicked earlier."
"Yeah, well hopefully he creeps his ass up here in a hurry, ay."
"Eh homes, you can hit this pinner for now, ay."

Fuck, strike one. I take a hit and continue on my mission. I look towards the end of the lot where the brothas are hanging and walk my big ass toward a group shooting dice. A shirtless asshole with his pants barely hanging well below his ass starts talking.

"Whatcha need cuz?"
"Some smoke, what's the word?"
"Ahh, all I got is that snow but my man suppose to be rolling up here with some dro but we're still waiting, you can hit this blunt if you want cuz."

Some dro? Yeah the fuck right. I wasn't holding my breath waiting on some brotha with hydro, I hit the blunt. Strike two, and all these motherfuckers just waiting around for different people to get some dope to the spot. The only bright spot in the entire area was a group of the most slutty ghetto bitches anyone of us will ever see. You know the type, sluts with blond hair and brown roots, wearing a half pound of eye liner, tube tops and short ass shorts with their thong showing. The best part, I knew one of them.

"What's up girl? Where's the weed at?"
"We're waiting for (insert baby daddy name here), but you can hit this one hitter if you want."

So now, I've got a nice little buzz going and I was running out of people to ask and tension was building up, motherfuckers wearing their colors, throwing up bullshit signs and starting to talk loud. More and more were starting to loiter in the lot and no sign of anybody trying to sell weed. The first patrol cars make their rounds, slowly cruising the car wash, not really fucking with anyone in particular but making their presence known. Since they got me on paper, paranoia immediately starts kicking in. I decide to move my car to the grocery store parking lot down the street. On my way back I thought to myself that something was sure to go down, and I would end up with shit out of the deal.

That's when I spotted all the Chinese dudes hanging around their nitrous filled Hondas with all their bullshit stickers. I see this one asshole who calls himself Sun. I always ask the fuckhead if it's because he shines like one, but the asshole always misses the Wu-Tang reference. I bet he'd get it if I quoted Buddah or some shit, but he always has what you need.

"Yo kid, I need an O Z."
"You know the deal, 6-5 son."

Finally, I got my shit, now I can get the fuck out before some shit goes down. Just as I was getting back to my car I heard the distinct sound I'd been waiting for all day. Something like pop, pop. Pause. Pop, pop, pop. Gun shots ringing out near the car wash, as usual. Still paranoid, and not wanting my car to be seen driving away from anywhere near the area, I ducked into the grocery store and spent the next hour and half kicking some kids asses at Street Fighter II. What? It's the hood, what game do you think they have, Golden Tee 2005 or some shit?

On the way home I thought about my dream and how great it would be not to have to spend the better part of my day talking ebonics with a bunch of fuckers who probably violate the terms of my probation just by being in my presence.

The fucked up part is that I spent 2 hours at a fucking car wash and my car is still dirty but hey, at least I'm high.

Mission Accomplished

The Bride To Be

Once in a while, the news media picks a winner. The Jennifer ColdFootedRunaway Bride-To-Be-of-the-Century Wilbanks story has given every ideological axe a good grinding. Elian Gonzalez. Feh. Cuban Leaguer.

Anti-Christian bigots now have their evidence of the mental illness inherent in religion. Environmentalists lauded her use of mass transit and jogging. Gays snickered at the sanctity of heterosexual marriage anew. Religious bigots tested their tolerance of tolerance. Women's rights groups cheered her audacity against the patriarchy. Mens' rights groups want to see her jailed with the Wendy's finger chili lady and pay full restitution to Richard Gere's gerbil. The Blacks love a skinny crazy white girl. Upper-class whites feel guilty, and operators of helplines for 32-year old runaways salivate at the new funding they will get. Even Michael Jackson got off on seeing that blanket on her head at the airport. Every group has spoken except the Runtowards.

Runtowards are Runaways with a plan. Famous Runtowards include Roman Polanski, DB Cooper, Amelia Earhart, and David Hasselhoff, who escaped cultural persecution in America to find a hero's welcome amongst the tin ears of Germany. Runtowards are seldom heard from because they don't want to be heard from. Runtowards don't care what you think about them. They don't even care that I've dangled my past three participles.

Runaways are people who want desperately to be missed without the inconvenience of suicide. It's like arranging to attend your own funeral or producing your own remake of "It's A Wonderful Life" the horrendous disaster of a Christmas movie that only reinforces the myth of runaway martyrdom...and that capitalism is cold-hearted and wheelchairbound, but I drift.

Here's the typical runaway gameplan:

Step 1. Run away in sweats.
Step 2. Blame it on minorities.
Step 3. Uhhhhhh...get, like, famous and stuff?

Amateur hour. Dime a dozen, these Runaways. Just cowards who can't handle the truth so they strive to manipulate it by conspicuous absence. Runaways, like maps, are useless without a destination.

I ran away once. About 10 years ago, my boss at a radio station pissed me off about an hour before I was scheduled to go on air. I walked out of his office and straight to the parking lot without telling anyone. Bought some snacks and Cokes and turned on the radio for the night's entertainment. The "Will They Need John" Show was starting soon. That show never aired. The "Warm Available Body Who Pretends John Never Existed" Show ran instead. Newspapers all over town spiked the "Where's John?" stories in favor of more compelling stories of Long Island sewer bond issues. I ran toward the Kinkos to make resumes, a converted Runtoward for life. Today, I come to you fresh off a yearlong blackballing from the broadcasting profession with a hero's welcome around town. I had a plan.

So, as a member of the Kickedout wing of the Runtowards Party, the last political group to leave the Greyhound bus station, let me just say this to the Runaway:

Hallmark makes no card for you. Jen, you were liked more in absence.

Team Demonz And The Melee In Kuala Lumpur

Fate brought me to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, well before the year of the Thaidalwave, back in the '90's actually. The pre-tsunami days were joyful, full of the kind of celebration of life, poverty, and any damned thing they felt like that makes the Malaysian people perhaps the friendliest and most accommodating people on the planet. If you ever find yourself south of Thailand, be sure to stop short of Singapore and spend at least a week in Malaysia.

Be prepared to party on only half your cylinders, though: Possession of any drug more fun than alcohol is punishable by death. Granted, using most drugs more fun than alcohol usually entails a flirtation with the Spectre, but Malaysian law links them inextricably. They also outlaw gambling and porn, but like everywhere on this carnival freak show of a planet, there's a well regulated black market to circumvent the law. The country is run by Muslims, and it seems that it's run very well: the trains are more or less on time, the streets are in more or less alright condition, and they aren't pointing nuclear missiles at anyone. Though alcohol is strictly forbidden in Islam, Malaysia allows it so as to keep the tourists happy.

It's a dandy of a country, and I was brought in to cover an ice hockey tournament at the Sunway Pyramid. Apparently the American and Canadian expatriate population has enough swing, and Ringitt, to have somehow wound up with an indoor ice hockey rink not but four degrees north of the Equator. The opportunity was ripe for a romp through another overlooked Asian country...and the doors started opening on the flight in.

Somewhere around 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, on our way to a layover in Stockholm, a tall Asian steward crept up the aisles with a beverage cart. Reaching my seat, his eyes grew wide at the sight of my hockey jersey. "You play hockey?" he asked, somewhat hastily. "Not really, I'm a writer," I said, and he asked energetically if I was on my way to the tournament in Kuala Lumpur. I said yes, and after his trip back down the aisle he sat next to me and asked all about hockey. We talked for three hours, when at length, he rose and shuffled off to rear of the plane. He came back as I was falling asleep, waking me by jamming something cold and round into my ribs.

I woke up. Fast.

"Take," he said, smiling through the dimly lit cabin on our midnight run over open water. "Take, take." I reached around and grabbed a bottle of French champagne. "You find my team," he continued, "team Demonz. You teach them American way to play, OK?"

Sure, I nodded. Why not?

He came back a few minutes later with another bottle, and explicit instructions to put one in each of my carry on bags, not to say anything at the border, and to look for him at the tournament. Then he disappeared into the black cavern of the 7something7, and I didn't see him for the rest of the flight.

Fast forward to Thursday night, a week later, with the tournament all wrapped up and the international teams ready to tear shit up in the tropics. In my hotel room I donned my cleanest dirty shirt, grabbed a strip of condoms with someone else's name and fake British contact information written on them with a fine-tip Sharpie, and headed for the door. Something called from the room, though, in the subtle, sexy way that sins can comfort you as they steal your soul.

I remembered the champagne.

Our bus was parked on the chaotic street, and was rocking oddly sideways, somewhat rhythmically, when I stepped out of the lobby with a bottle in each hand. The local tourist board was kind enough to provide us with free transportation to a player's party at a nightclub in KL (Club 72, if you're familiar...it's up the street from Beach Club, two blocks from the Towers). A team of Brits was already aboard, as I could tell by the accents flying out of the door and echoing off the teaming cars that fought for motion on an impossibly clogged street. The swaying bus threatened to tip and topple at any moment.

Climbing aboard, I saw the goalie locked in mortal combat with two defense players, one a huge Canadian, the other a New Zealand beast. They were thrashing about, destroying everything in their way...much to the delight of the crowd.

The glorious melee left two seats broken and various isolated destruction... pretty light damage, all things considered. I gave a bottle to the goalie and another to a friend, and they popped the corks with gusto. Champagne flew everywhere, and one bottle was emptied largely into the air as the goalie shook it and sprayed everyone within range. I somehow came into possession of a bottle of bourbon, which I took a long pull from while being soaked by champagne raining off the ceiling.

I lowered the bottle and looked out the window at a small crowd of Asian men who gathered on the sidewalk and were staring, mouths agape, through the tinted window at the madness and carnage and booze-showers inside. They pointed at us with their thumbs, the color draining completely from their faces. It was a curious sight, so I smiled and toasted them with the bourbon. They just blinked blankly up at me.

As it turns out, we trashed the bus they use to pick up Muslims to go to the Mosque on holy days. Whoops.

I had nothing to do with it, Allah. I swear.