Instructions: Put the headphones on. No, they’re not plugged into anything but this old dark corner of a barn. Let a spider crawl through the wire and into your ear. The music is the sound of her eggs hatching in your auditory canal, and you’ll need to listen carefully to it, so you can mimic it perfectly on the piano at the bookcase in the mansion that will open to reveal a secret passageway to a subterranean second mansion. That’s your home now. Sure, it’s got enough rooms for you to host a party and keep your work friends and school friends from ever meeting each other and inevitably exchanging stories about your substandard table manners, but every bathroom has the toilet paper unrolling from the back and a lock on there that prevents you from ever fixing it and every toaster in its many kitchens has a fucked up light/dark setting on the toaster that keeps you from making decent toast, even when you’re certain that you marked the perfect spot on the dial with a Sharpie. Use your wits to master the art of making toast in a frying pan, because you’ll need your strength for your day’s work of transcribing in longhand your interview with a septuagenarian parrot that has outlived multiple owners. Spend the next month holed up with the Remington Standard typewriter in your chamber and emerge with your masterpiece, then mail the manuscript to all five sets of brothers you know named Kevin and Kyle. Endure their withering criticism over your failure to adequately explain the parrot’s controversial failure to testify at the murder trial of Colombian drug kingpin Gerardo “Pan Dulce” Montoya, who acquired the blue Hyacinth macaw in 1987 in a card game and owned him until 1990, when he was shot at his Miami villa by DEA agents after a lengthy standoff. Run, the wind chafing your hot tear-stained cheeks, around the perimeter of the property, clutching your unfavorable reviews and seeking a spot to bury them where no one can see them. Settle on an area behind the hedge surrounding the western servant’s quarters and burrow with your hands under its sun-dappled leaves, until the black earth under your fingernails makes them ache. Collapse from exhaustion and listen to the sound of your breathing slowly diminish from frantic gasps to a sound too quiet for human ears, until you’re lying perfectly still. Feel the cool moist soil against your face and think to yourself what a perfect spot this would be to just silently decompose. Got it? Congratulations, you’ve just completed step one.
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french prince of bel air
Few of Life’s Little Joys rival that of brushing one’s teeth while high. Leave aside the obvious fact that toothpaste, like other things, never tastes better than it does under the influence. The sensation of the toothbrush’s bristles going over your teeth and gums and between the crevices is a really pleasurable one, and one that often goes sadly unappreciated by sober persons. Plus you get that gross weed taste out of your mouth. Once you’ve brushed your teeth, of course, you’re ready to go out and mingle among the world’s more productive citizenry to observe them, and with your chemically enhanced wisdom, silently judge them for not being as in touch with the complex machinery, the intricate ballet, of the world as you’re seeing it right now.
Sunday morning brunch with friends seems the optimal setting for the people-watching that presents itself naturally to today’s discriminating pot smoker, and the break from various stressors is welcome. It’s November, and I’m already feeling that creep of dread again, occurring dully like a toothache that I only notice intermittently. My hatred of the holidays probably falls outside the scope of what can be explained away as normal seasonal depression, but today it’s offset by interaction with loved ones to whom we are bound by mutual consent, by choice, not by biologically preordained obligation.
We’ve having such a great time that I’m not even really bothered by the fact that our kids are making a tremendous mess. When you don’t go out much, you can afford to leave a 30% tip to make up for any soggy straw wrappers or crunched-up-and-thrown sweetener packets I’ve overlooked as I stuff the meal’s litter into my jeans pocket. It’s the kind of day that we’ll look back on years from now as a reminder of how great our early thirties were, when our kids were young. Increasingly it seems to me lately that unless you’re very lucky, your body will spend the first few decades of life determining the most frustrating- the most psychologically undermining- way to fail you, and then run headlong in that direction. That hasn’t happened to any of us yet, and I’m uncharacteristically appreciative of that today, while aware that it won’t always be this great.
Before the bill comes, I take a quick trip to the restroom, where someone has scratched the words “will travel” onto the mirror. The words are also reflected a quarter-inch behind in the glass, and from the angle I am standing at the urinal, the graphic interplay of the two identical sets of letters creates its own interesting architecture. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” is playing over the intercom in here, and I stand there a few extra seconds with my pants unzipped until Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo is over, appreciating yet another of the day’s little details that I wouldn’t ordinarily notice. On my way back to our table, I check my phone to see three missed calls from family members in a five-minute span. Quickly the day’s dreamy haze dissipates.
stilt dance party
You guys, the craziest thing happened to me recently. I was testing out the latest prototype for a toaster oven that works in the bathtub, when suddenly a bright light appeared before me. I felt drawn to it, closer and closer, swimming in air as if I were an astronaut in zero gravity, for what felt like days. Once I arrived, I was told that my talents were needed on earth for a while longer, but before being sent back I was allowed to take a quick tour for free, with the understanding that once I returned I would casually mention this amazing little corner of the universe whenever possible as long as it didn’t upset the natural flow of conversation, to help drum up a little business for them. I awoke face down in the water, surrounded by floating charred pizza bagel fragments, grateful for this new lease on life.
Heaven is truly a wonderful place, with streets paved with gold, faucets that run with champagne, and toothpaste that doesn’t taste weird when mixed with champagne. Every night is steak finger night, unless you want something else, in which case the staff will be happy to whip up something special for you. Sub sandwich? Done. Heaven also boasts the universe’s only known weed dealer to get a perfect thirty-point rating from Zagat’s. Oh, and humans get slightly higher status than angels, despite the fact that the angels have been there a lot longer, so you have this built-in class of schmucks to feel superior to, right off the bat. It’s like they thought of everything. You might even call it a little slice of heaven on earth, except for the fact that it’s in heaven.
Yes, lots of people will be in heaven, even people you don’t like. For example, your aunt that forwards you all those emails in all caps electric blue comic sans font about the President being a secret Muslim terrorist? Not only will she be in heaven, she has dibs on a fucking sweet rent-controlled place with a breathtaking view of all the pagans suffering in hell (you should probably get in good with her; she might let you house sit). And remember that family that used to come in every week in their Sunday best to the Chili’s where you worked in college and tipped like 5% because the dad had to ask to have his tea glass refilled once? Well, only the dad will be in heaven, as the family perished in a fiery car crash before the two little girls had a chance to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior, and the mom once made out with a girl at a party in high school.
We must all make sure we don’t waste our few allowable bad needs on minor chickenshit transgressions that don’t bring us much satisfaction, for at the end of our lives, our good deeds must outnumber our bad ones. For example, I made actual eye contact with my doorman today, which no doubt put a couple of points in the “entry permitted” side for me in God’s Great Ledger. It may be a struggle to maintain this harmonious balance for the rest of my life, but I’m up for the challenge, as I truly cannot wait to return to my eternal reward. Now, if someone will please hold my helmet for me, for my next trick I’m going to ride this unicycle down Danger Mountain.
i owe handicapped people everywhere an apology for what i just did to one of their bathroom stalls
“All right, Jenkins, I don’t think anybody harbors any illusions as to why we’ve called you in here today. The brass here at Grandma’s Little Clementine OrangesCorp hired you last year because- and nobody’s arguing this- goddammit, you’re the best there is at what you do. And let’s face it: without the considerable skill set you bring the table, our stock wouldn’t have gone up 18% last year. You’ve made a lot of very important people here very happy. As you know, our mission statement is ‘providing idea-based citrus solutions for a changing global marketplace’. But our shadow mission statement, as you learned last week when you were initiated into our corporate inner circle with a blood oath and a secret handshake, is ‘getting every man, woman, and child in America hooked on little clementine oranges, and then, when the technology is ready in five years, injecting the oranges with mind-reprogramming nanorobotics that will turn the citizenry into a nation of slaves at our disposal forever and ever.’ Now, no one’s questioning your methods, or your loyalty to both of our equally important mission statements, but I’ve been going over some of your expense reports lately, and frankly, I don’t see how they pertain to the important work you do here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for starters, you hired REO Speedwagon to play at your birthday party. And not only that, you pulled the top scientists from our robotics division off Project Q and had them build a guitar-playing android to replace Gary Richrath, the guitarist from the band’s ‘classic lineup’. Then there’s this receipt for a box of authenticated game-worn Michael Jordan jerseys, along with a signed affadavit from your assistant stating that you’ve just been using these to blow your nose on once, then throwing them away. Also, who authorized you to offer a personal-services contract to a plus-size exotic dancer named Ample Pie?”
“Well, Murphy, I want you to trust me, so I’m going to trust you with something I haven’t shared with a lot of people. You see, my success here at Grandma’s Little Clementine OrangesCorp is driven by a childhood of abject poverty, one in which my parents had to institute an across-the-board 5 percent pay cut for our estate’s kitchen staff, just to be able to afford to send me to the second-best prep school in town. I did some gangsta-ass shit to survive in that jungle, and I never learned how to turn the switch off that instinct. For example, you know Johnson from human resources? Well, on the elevator ride up here, I strangled him for his egg salad sandwich. I guess what I’m saying here is that this is just the way I’m wired.”
“All right, Jenkins. Thank you for your honesty. I think I speak for all of us here on the board when I say that we’re prepared to take the bad with the good. Keep up the good work.”
“Oh, and just a heads-up: on my next expense report there’s gonna be an ice sculpture that I’ll be having commissioned for my assistant’s funeral. Nobody dimes on Jenkins!”
i done did learnt computers
If site news, like new posts and such as, would give you a boner or the lady equivalent, you can now follow me on the Twitter: http://twitter.com/jimjbollocks
Yeah, I know; getting a Twitter account in August 2009 is like the modern equivalent to buying your first VCR in 1990, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a fad, like “smokeless” tobacco or cars with seat belts.
All right, quiet everyone; let’s all take our seats. Okay, this month’s meeting of the Young Inventors Club is now in session. Thanks to everyone for providing an especially great collection of inventions this month. So, without any further ado, let’s begin:
David, I was very impressed with your device. It reads your pulse during autoerotic asphyxiation, then if you die during the act, it completely incinerates your body. That way, the family member who discovers you sees only a pile of ash, and doesn’t have to have their last memory of you be “choking while choking.” Very compassionate.
Sharon, I didn’t think you could improve on the video phone you brought in last month, but you have. This program, which alters the background so it looks like you’re someplace besides the horse track while talking to the loan officer at the bank about your mortgage, is the perfect touch.
Brandon, to be honest, I don’t know if a McDonald’s that serves breakfast all day is an invention, per se, but this is one gorgeous scale model you’ve built here. Kudos to you!
Finally, one of our own has been singled out for recognition. Roger, these men in sunglasses and dark suits are here to see you about your cold fusion replicator. They say you’ve been nominated for a very special secret award and want you to get into their car, no questions asked, just get in the fucking car.
it’s not a rerun, it’s a classic
While preparing for a yard sale, my significant other* uncovered this little ditty I wrote my junior year of high school. I don’t recall writing this, but my best guess is that when it came time to submit our school activities to the yearbook, this was the list I turned in:
Varsity Wrestling
National Art Honor Society
Orchestra
Jazz Band
Rick James Fan Club (disbanded at semester)
Dead Sea Scrolls Translator Club
Cooking Club
National Fish-Cleaning Honor Society
Water Buffalo Club (runner-up to Fred Flintstone in presidential race, but it’s just a fucking popularity contest anyway)
Secretary, Planning Committee, Seperate-But-Equal Midget Prom
Students Supporting Students With Lice
Leather-Tanning Club
Treasurer, Future Porn-Stars of America
Plano East Organized Militia
Vegeterian-Bashers Club
Organizing Staff, Girl-Haters’ Year-End BBQ
I was fascinated by the insight this thing provided re: my early sense of humor and exactly how little it has evolved since 1994 (although today’s version of me wouldn’t be down with the leather tanning or vegeterian-bashing. or the fish-cleaning or barbecuing, for that matter. jeez, what was the deal with my need to spill the innocent blood of animals back then? i was like a werewolf, except i sucked at basketball, didn’t have a friend with a van that i rode on top of, and nobody wanted to have sex with me). Also, I got a big kick out of the fact that the phrase “Students Supporting Students With Lice” can be read multiple ways. Sure, the most likely meaning is that the club was made up of students supporting other students who happened to have lice, but I like to think that the club was dedicating to building human pyramids with the bottom layer made up of trillions of lice.
*don’t worry, ladies; I will still do you**
**pending passage of my impossible and terribly unfair standards of beauty
cue serious music
I spent a lot of time in hospitals as a kid. Kind of comes with the territory when your dad’s a preacher, ministering to the sick and whatnot. His duties kept him out late a lot of nights, and my mom’s main selling point was that it would be good for both of us if I accompanied him on his rounds a few nights a week. I realized early on, however, that the plan was born more out of necessity than any bonding opportunity: my mom had begun working nights and they didn’t know what else to do with me. It all served to confirm my growing suspicion that grown-ups didn’t have some magical knowledge to help them navigate the world; they just did what they needed to skate by, inventing the why after the fact to fit the what.
I came to this realization pretty abruptly one night while my dad was reading scripture to Mrs. Feeney, and when I did, a calming feeling washed over me and I stopped worrying about how the vinyl back of a chair in this waiting room wasn’t a very good surface to do my math homework on so it’s hard to focus and maybe that’s why my grades haven’t been so good this year.
It was a lesson that prepared me, perhaps uniquely, for the trials to come later in my life, and I sometimes think that some higher power- if not the God, at least a god- knew I would need the ability to shoulder burdens, often alone, without being overcome by them. Regardless of the origins, I’m glad I learned the skill, because about a month after my fourteenth birthday, I discovered that I had gigantic bat wings and the ability to start fires with my mind.
My literary agent has said he wants me to do more to raise visibility of my “brand”, and recently he gave me a list of suggestions to that end. I question the merit of a highly publicized trip to drug rehab, though, not only because I don’t think it would spill that much ink, but mostly because I will never fucking stop using drugs, no matter who I hurt or how much property I damage along the way. So instead I’m rolling with one of his other suggestions, and debuting my new Cosmo/Marie Claire-style advice column. As always, these are actual submissions from actual readers.
Dana, Connecticut: My boyfriend likes me to keep things trimmed pretty closely, you know, down there, but my husband keeps complaining about the scratchy stubble. Help!
As with a lot of things in life, compromise can keep everybody happy. Take a cue from the British and manicure your lady hedge into a shape that everyone can enjoy. Something tasteful, like a lightning bolt. Look around on the internet; I’m sure there are templates you can print out. By the way, this is the only non-Halloween-related personal hygiene item that you should ever take a cue from the British on.
Mistee, Ontario: Lately I’ve been making decisions that have some of my friends worrying about me. I’ve been going home with a lot of guys, and my roommate has said I might be a nymphomaniac. Should I seek out a professional?
There are a lot of misconceptions floating around out there about sexual compulsivity, a/k/a nymphomania, so get the facts first. Here are a few:
1. it is awesome.
2. you should make at least a cursory attempt to convince guys that you have it.
Throughout time, nature has pivoted on the battle over the earth’s finite resources, and the dating world is no different. Do something that separates you from your girlfriends, who, make no mistake about it, are your chief competitors. It’s like when I wanted to start a Misfits cover band, before I realized we wouldn’t be able to compete with that one Misfits cover band that actually has Jerry Only playing in it.
Pam, Florida: Lately I’ve noticed that gravity has begun taking its toll on my body. Short of finding the fountain of youth, what can I do?
You may not know this, Pam, but I’ve been watching you for a long time and waiting for the right moment to bring this up. Your current bra is terribly inefficient, and you’re throwing away hundreds of dollars a year in energy costs. Furthermore, the hook assembly at the back is more complicated than the gear shifter on a Soviet car (don’t ask me how I know this; I don’t even have a driver’s license anymore). Think of a new bra as an investment in yourself, girl, and spare no expense. People say the rustproofing is a scam, but just try getting through winter without it.
Sirikit, Thailand: I was kidnapped by sex traders at an early age, but since I turned 17, my value has gone down considerably. So I may be due for a career change, assuming my captors don’t decide it would be cheaper to kill me. Any suggestions?
Take some time off and find yourself. I’d advise you to study abroad for a semester, but you’re already in a foreign country. Whatever you decide, I wish you nothing but the very best of luck!
If you are reading this missive, it means that I have died. If I have not yet died and you are reading this against my wishes, fuck you. In 2096, science definitively disproved the existence of an afterlife, but I will find a way to haunt you from beyond the grave.
The reason I created this mind-file, dear surviving friend or family member, is to confess something I never could muster the courage to discuss during my time on earth. My role in the Great Human-Robot Conflict of 2047 was much more prominent that I have let on. For decades I maintained that I was a low-level mechanic that didn’t see much action, but that was a mere cover story so I wouldn’t have to discuss the horrors I saw on the front lines of the war against the robots I had grown to love like brothers before the Betrayal.
Things weren’t always like this, you see. Robots were once our most trusted companions. When work obligations on Datison-12 prevented my biological parents from attending my high school graduation, I went into the attic and recharged the old Sittertron, who filled in ably. Years later, the recorded video of the ceremony through synthetic-tear-stained optic sensors still brings back memories. Robots served us in ways that can never be repaid. A friend of mine (not me, I swear) was once alerted to a testicular lump after a session with a particularly thorough Hitachi sexxx-bot (okay, it was me. but that was the 2030s; you had to be there).
Where was I? Ah, yes, the war. Yes, we humans emerged victorious, but I, like so many of my generation, spent a lifetime laying awake at night wondering whether the price we paid was worth it. Hiding under a pile of dead robots, then surprising their grieving comrades with a flamethrower when they came to honor their fallen. Replacing an oil shipment destined for a robot refugee camp with industrial-size drums of yellow mustard. Goddammit, didn’t even have the decency to use brown mustard. Gaining the trust of a simple farming droid, then hitting his off-switch, which was briefly exposed when he turned to introduce me to his children. Ultimately, I fear the acts I committed to preserve humanity cost me my own.
And now, as I record this message from inside the hyperbaric chamber that has provided me with a full head of dark hair, six-pack abs, and diamond-hard erections on demand even at the ripe old age of 124, I pose to you a question: is the world you have inherited all that you want? Because if not, don’t waste your time looking for anything good on Sephalon-22. I made a fortune building condos there, but trust me, it’s a real shithole.
