Sack of Shame

Is anything more shameful than shame? Don’t think; the answer is no. Nothing could be worse. Not even drowning ducks in acid compares to the tragedy of being made fun of. It’s not like the easily shamed are jelly-headed buffoons who emote brain cells out of their tear ducts. They have no choice in the matter. Being annihilated by words is mandatory. Other people’s opinions matter. Don’t laugh! They really do! How would we value our lives if not for the inane assessments of Wiki educated commenters? By not caring about what they say? That doesn’t sound melodramatic enough, so excuse me while I dismiss it forever. Everyone should be coddled with positive affirmations all the time. Except for people who shame others. Vile shame-shovelers should be shamed into a state of permanent shame. That’ll learn ‘em! 

Despite popular misconceptions, sluts are people. Social hearsay regards sluts as used sex dolls sparked to life with transplanted bird brains and fairy magic, but that’s just a myth. Sluts are not here to be fucked and laughed at. They’re here to be fucked and respected. If you’re not going to mock a cantaloupe after a pelvic juicing, why would you laugh at a slut? Because they make louder, squishier noises? That’s so immature. Besides, cantaloupe-shaming doesn’t have the same impact as slut-shaming. It’s never acceptable to shame a slut. No, not even when they fuck 100,000 men and insist their boyfriend “come to terms with it.” Indiscriminately gyrating against anyone within a city block is a respectable, nay, admirable life choice.  

According to squawking gynoceroses everywhere, slut-shaming is another tool used to oppress women in our rape culture (i.e. a culture that minimizes, excuses and even condones rape). That’s so true. If people didn’t use the word “slut,” rapists would be sent to prison instead of being rewarded with gift baskets and keys to the city. I can’t tell you how many parents I’ve heard tell their children “You should be more like that rapist we saw on the news.” Damn rape culture! Of course, this form of shame only applies to women. Weiners can’t be slut-shamed, even when they’re sending pictures of their wieners to consenting adults. 

Elsewhere, men have decided to undergo hormone therapy. Oddly enough, they’ve bypassed the surgical operation required in sex changes. Now they’re bodies bubble with estrogen despite their male anatomy. They’re called MRA’s (Men’s Rights Activists or Mansies Run Amok). Like feminists, their purpose in life is to whine about what other people say and do while insisting that the world adapt to them instead of the other way around. Isn’t it nice to have morally superior gender gangs dictating how we should think and live? Thank goodness they’re here to warn us about the dangers of creep-shaming. 

Creep-shaming is when women brand men as “creepy” because they don’t find them attractive. Since  the word “creep” is used by women to shame men, it falls into the same line of pejoratives as pervert, dick, man-whore, scumbag, sleazy, asshole and douche. Female supremacists and male feminists suffering from internal penis shame believe creep-shaming is justified because creepy creeps refuse to respect women’s boundaries. According to them, it’s rare that a woman would call a guy a creep just because they find him unattractive. We all know that women are never vindictive, cruel, mean, abusive, hateful or indeed, creepy. Just consider how kind they are to short, half-humanoid stubs who dare call themselves men. At any rate, shaming is shaming and for the purposes of this article I must condemn it. It’s not okay to call guys “creeps” or label them as “creepy.” No, not even when they’re raping an unconscious woman. Still not an excuse. A guy jacking off in K-Mart’s infant section is not creepy, you intolerant hate-monger.

Turning away from gender, fat-shaming is becoming bigger than a bloated rascal rider at a pie eating contest. Fat jokes have always existed for comedic laymen who can only point out the obvious. Feeding on intellectual laziness, they emphasize the moo moo draped elephant in the room over the subtle and crafty pocket gerbil. I take pride in crafting hurtful and personalized insults for everyone I encounter. Fat jokes just seem too easy. This is the same reason I don’t beat up the handicapped, though I’d like to state it’s the only reason. Squeaking wheelchairs infuriate my sense of well-being.  

Cholesterol-abundant citizens had their blood bubbling when “Fat Shaming Week” was declared. Fat-shaming week (as though it needs explaining) is a week dedicated to fat-shaming fat people out of being fat. It was started by a bunch of Tucker Max wannabes who give misogynists everywhere a bad name. Their site actually has an article titled “Lessons Learned from the Fast and the Furious” and it was written and posted in a most sincere fashion. I think that says it all. Without knowing any “Return of Kings” members, I have no problem assuming these fraturbators paddle each other’s asses under a Greek flag. I’ll bet they call people fags while doing it.

In conjunction with this online fat holiday is real world fat-shaming. There was an inmate in Brazil who was too fat to escape from prison. His potbelly was so bulbous it couldn’t fit through the hand dug tunnel. He was stuck for several hours before being freed. It’s easy to think he could’ve done some extra sit-ups or carved a wider tunnel, but let’s recognize this incident for what it was - he was fat-shamed by the laws of physics. It’s up to us as caring human beings to change these unjust laws so he’ll never be fat-shamed again. These laws need to be eradicated for the sake of metabolically-challenged individuals everywhere. It has nothing to do with my desire to set fire to the Great Salt Lake with a single match. 

Other forms of shaming tend to go unnoticed with all these sad sluts and fat people running around. Poor-shaming, for instance, is quite real. As with the forms of shaming listed above, there have always been poor jokes, but never before was the word “shaming” stapled to the intended target. Now calling a poor person a “dirt jockey” is shaming. Apparently, there’s also such a thing as thin-shaming. I’m guessing this involves making fun of starving kids in third world countries. Recently, there’s been a heavy wave of twerk-shaming. Twerking, also know as the “Epileptic Ass Clap,” was made popular when one of Mickey Mouse’s pubic hair dolls escaped the catacombs of the Matterhorn and began grinding it’s flat spot on some shitty pop singer’s junk. Any logical person can see that mocking someone for wiggling their hindquarters against a nearby pelvis is wrong. Honestly, what’s so amusing about a young lady bending over and displaying a fanny seizure? Nothing, that’s what. 

All this talk of shaming makes me realize I’ve shamed people considerably throughout the years. I feel so terrible about it. I’d like to share my shameful shaming practices. If nothing else, it proves we still have time to milk this buzzword before it dries out completely. 

Slow-shaming - I’ve hated people for moving slow (especially in the self-checkout line). Despite the fact that just minutes ago I saw these insufferable sloths move faster, they simply can’t help their choice of moving slowly when it suits them and inconveniences me. I need to respect their alternative lifestyle. 

Laugh-shaming - Have you ever heard a loud, choppy laugh that sounds like a clown gargling helium? I have. I’ve often fantasized about sealing these people up in a concrete tomb and throwing them in the ocean. That’s not okay. 

Period-shaming - I’ve made countless jokes about blood flowing out of the vagina directly correlating to blood flowing away from the brain. What was I thinking?

Foot-shaming - I’m disgusted and repelled by people’s feet. Something must be wrong with me. 

Prophet-shaming - I think Christ’s hands look like glazed donuts that got hate fucked by a homeless man. I often wonder how Mohammed keeps his balance on a flying carpet while nailing nine year olds. I’m convinced Moses was a pied piper dimwit who didn’t have the foresight to pack a map. I’m a bad person. 

So the question remains - How can we end shaming once and for all? The answer is to publicly shame anyone who shames anyone else into feeling shame. If this doesn’t make sense it’s because you’re thinking too hard. There’s nothing hypocritical about shaming someone who tried to shame someone. Forming a mob and exacting vigilante justice is always the most clearheaded and rational way to solve your problems. Luckily, there are people who are willing to use “mean tweets” as a catalyst for researching a mean tweeter’s personal information and calling their work or leaving mean tweets of their own. There’s nothing creepy or stalker related about that. And there’s certainly nothing stupid about the phrase “mean tweet.” 

Thankfully, it doesn’t end there. Online vigilantes aren’t just attacking racists who are too dumb to differentiate extreme muslim terrorists from an American-born Miss America who may or may not pray to a four-armed elephant while shunning cheeseburgers from her diet. 

A group of anti-pedophile red coats called “Letzgo Hunting” setup a child molester online by pretending to be a fourteen year old girl. Every healthy adult pretends to be a fourteen year old girl at some point in their lives. Mr. Heavy Hands was confronted by a group of angry parents when he got to the park. He quickly turned away and ran, leaving a trail of falling flakes from his semen encrusted underoos. Or maybe he just ran. At any rate, the pedo-pursuers videotaped the incident and posted it online. It wasn’t long until the fun-size enthusiast was arrested. He killed himself after posting bail. No more playing children like a piccolo for him. If there’s anything to take away from this story it’s that he was pedo-shamed to death. He could’ve went on to be a great costumed mascot or sock puppeteer, but he was cut down in the prime of his candy-baiting life, all because people made him feel shame. What a shame!

Shaming is wrong. It gives people boo boos on their feelers. Nothing about it is okay. It’s like, totally not cool. Sanctuary from any form of criticism is a human right. It’s not like these people thrive on the status of victimhood because it gives them a form of identity when there would otherwise be none. Nor do they tactlessly argue with each other over who’s shamed most and who’s privileged. Speaking of which, “privilege,” like “shame,” is a word that never gets old, no matter how many nouns or adjectives you put next to it. Keep up the important work online activists. There’s no way you’re ever going to run these words into the ground. Words don’t lose meaning when they’re repeated ad nauseam and out of context by every person on the planet. 

It’s not like you’re parroting phrases you read on some progressive blog because you want people to think you’re a hip intellectual. Perish the thought! You really do care! If only everyone could be as enlightened as you. Perhaps then we could live in a world where nobody reacts in any way to anything they see or hear. Until that happens, we can always have our two minutes of hate where we hate on people who hate on people and pretend we’re not hateful people. Plus, all our friends on Facebook will “like” it and nothing is more important than the validation we receive from others.

Cybored

Creatures from science fiction novels live among us. I can’t skip down the street without bumping into a cyborg. As a young sprout, I often dreamed of a world taken over by monsters, aliens, robots and yes, cyborgs. My fantasy of planetary destruction at the claws of nonhuman lifeforms helped me cope with the burden of being around other people. I blanketed myself in this comforting reverie and chanted, “One day...one day it will happen,” like a servant of the metaphysical cloud nymph praying for yummy manna. Like all positive thinking, clicking and finger-snapping wishes to the stars, this dream ended in disappointment. The reality of a world crawling with cyborgs isn’t as exciting as my imagination led me to believe. 

Superficially, the anatomy of real world cyborgs is duller than watching cottage cheese expire. Popular folklore suggests cyborgs are humans with organic minds and mechanical appendages. “Robocop” was a man inside a robotic body. This was probably achieved by supergluing an Atari motherboard to knight armor, but let’s not speculate on frivolous technicalities. What matters is that cyborgs in the real world are computerized in the mind. Occasionally you’ll find a defective model who uses their technology to project holographic images of their genitals in public, but that’s as mesmerizing as it gets. Most cyborgs have ditched their ineffective human brains for semi-efficient robot minds. This may sound interesting, but I assure you it’s not. The mechanical host brain is carried in their hands. How stupid is that? I can only assume their skulls are filled with cobwebs and circus peanuts. 

The iMind, carried in the hand or pocket, is the cyborg’s basis of existence. For reasons unknown, cyborgs call their digital minds “phones.” I believe this error in semantics is caused by a corrupted data file in their systems, but confirming this theory would involve speaking to a cyborg and that simply won’t happen. Though I’ve never conversed with them, I have observed their behavior. At first I was disgusted to learn that cyborgs rely on their flimsy palm brains for literally everything. This feeling receded with time. Now I merely feel a cool, detached level of disdain for their iDependence. Cyborgs plunk commands into their computerized minds, requesting information on where to eat, what to eat, how to breathe, what to watch, how to chew gum, what clouds look like, how to walk and any other trivial conundrum life presents. Once the inquiry is submitted, the cyborg’s handheld mind will retrieve content sorted by how many keywords are stuffed into a webpage. The cyborg will then skim and repeat the information found on the first web page, never questioning the validity of the source. Suffice it to say, cyborgs couldn’t have an opinion on anything if Wikipedia didn’t exist. 

An interesting feature of the mechanical brain is that it’s not capable of original or abstract thought. When a cyborg “creates” something, they’re actually scanning the collective hive mind for keywords, collecting the ideas of others. They then rephrase and repackage the recycled data as their own. To the cyborg brain, only that which already exists can be invented. This is why cyborgs believe that everything floating through the digital playground belongs to everyone. 

The unmechanized half of cyborgs is little more than a twitching sack of nerve endings. When I see an iTard they’re usually in the sitting position, though they have been known to stand if no chairs are around. Their glazed eyes drown in the screen and descend into their digital brain, incapacitating the rest of their body even while it’s standing. Every part of the body flops except for the palm muscles and finger joints. Rendered hollow by the parasitic computer mind, the dried husk of the organic host brain requires all the body’s energy to simultaneously skim data and tap the screen, which vaguely imitates the act of thinking if you’ve been huffing paint for a week. Since the wave of cyborgs is fairly recent, little is known about the bodily effects of lifelong immobility, nonthinking and excessive fingering. Unfortunately, our nation’s top chemists and biologists are too busy developing weight loss and boner pills, so the answers may be years ahead of us. I imagine they’ll devolve into a dead-eyed sack of gelatinous organs with strong, veiny hands emerging from flappy folds that were once arms. Their main function in society will be playing keyboards and molesting legless children. 

A less common aspect of cyborg anatomy involves a blue tooth located in the ear. Once a popular breed, only a subsection of cyborgs currently have this feature installed, making them a distinct and dying mutation within the cyborg species. The listening tooth allows them to hear voices in their head and talk to them. In the microcosm of cyborg evolution it was deemed necessary to have a chattering tooth wrapped around the ear. As with all forms of evolution, the blue-toothed blatherers have a distinct advantage over other cyborgs. Unlike their toothless brethren, these head cavities can talk to other people without using their hands, enabling them to eat cheese and masturbate while they speak. 

The mating habits of cyborgs achieve a contradictory state of being alien and boring. As with all of life’s problems, cyborgs consult their robotic minds for answers. Whereas other species look to the outside world for love or lust, cyborgs look within their detachable brain. They spend considerable time perusing the online meat hub for another cyborg as desperate as themselves. Some are searching for a longterm dumpster mate to grow rusty with. Many more are looking for anonymous blowjobs and Satanic butt-fucking. Given the inevitable deterioration of a cyborg’s skin jelly, one can only assume that successful mating encounters are initiated by a failed series of spasming and misguided thrusts, culminating in tearful fingering for both parties. At first glance, we could at least be thankful that reproduction would be next to impossible, but we must remember that cyborgs are part human. Humans, being self-aggrandizing replicants, will always find a way to pollute the planet with their offspring. 

With living cyborg discharge comes a growing concern - if these cyborgs are mutating from weak-willed humans and if these converted pod folk duplicate themselves, how will we get rid of them? 

I’m not sure we can. Like cancer, they will continue to spread and duplicate themselves until they’ve contaminated the world in their image. If we look at our contemporary lexicon, the evidence of cyborg infiltration is so rampant it’s easily  overlooked as normality. In twenty years acronyms will replace complete sentences. The entire world’s population will walk around saying, “OMG,” “LOL” and “TLDR” anytime someone addresses them with, more likely than not, a different set of acronyms. Eventually, the meanings of words will be lost and the value of noise emitting from a cyborg’s slacked orifice will be measured by it’s individual letters. AAFA - figure it out. Or don’t. Who cares? You can just Google it. 

This brings us to the primary religion of the cyborgs. The Great God Google lords over it’s dependent followers with the fervor of a hormonally imbalanced rapist in heat. When cyborgs argue, a mantra is chanted through the halls - “Google it.” “Google it” has become a hymn for cyborgs incapable of analytical thought or objective research. The fact that a web search, even with specified terms, will retrieve mountains of pages that are contradictory to one another, factually incorrect and sorted by pages intentionally loaded with popular keywords is of no concern to the faithful. Wikipedia is the prophet of user-submitted bias, wandering earth in the form of an encyclopedic research tool birthed to enrich our lives.  As the first link, it was chosen by the heavenly father to change our lives using hit and miss data mingled with easily digestible factoids. Cyborgs can all breathe with ease. They can now act like they know everything without having to think about anything. Of course, if the desire ever came to think about something, they could always Google it and learn how to think, assuming the page they click and skim wasn’t created by a false prophet who delights in finagling dullards with misinformation. 

Unfortunately, the cyborgs appear to be the wave of the future...the horrible, ugly, mentally obtuse future. There is no avoiding it. Luckily, we can make our own lives better by making the life of cyborgs intolerable. When they’re not looking, glue their phone to a public toilet. Your heart will flood with joy as the cyborg looks up to the sky, crying “Why Google? Why!?” We can get hours of entertainment by uploading false information into their collective mind and watching as they go around parroting these “facts” to one another. Like any insect swarm, if extermination is no longer possible, using them as tools for entertainment may be the salvation of unmechanized humans. If we can put ants in farms and tip cows in they’re sleep, why can’t we put cyborgs in glass cages or play cyborg dominos when they’re waiting in line for the brand new, life-changing, mildly updated phone that comes out every year? After all, the Great God Google did put them here for our amusement. If their god didn’t want them to be taken advantage of, why would it create brainless, finger-tapping imbeciles in the first place?

Sober Saturday

Last week I made a mistake and I’m not ready to forgive myself. I’ve relived the incident, imagining better decisions in a better place. Eternal regret may lie ahead and I can’t help but think it’s justified. Despite all this, life may still be worth living. It would be easy to spend restless nights torturing myself, but I’ve resolved to learn from my error. Wisdom gained through horrifying experience is my only consolation. There’s no way to undo what has been done. The only remedy to this travesty would be traveling back in time, but that would require hyper-accelerated movement of both natural and man-made elements. Sadly, I don’t have enough zinc in my blood, nor do I possess a turbo-powered carousel. No, I can only attempt to move on. I must come to terms with what I’ve done:

I went into the outside world without chemicals in my system. 

Even in retrospect I can’t understand what could’ve compelled me to act so recklessly. Not to say the causes weren’t present, but there should’ve been a voice inside me advising against such foolishness. Lesson learned - never trust the voices in your mind. They’ll promise riches and a deep understanding of the universe, but the moment you actually need them they’re nowhere to be found. In fact, at this moment I’m shirking personal responsibility and blaming everything that happened on Count Slick Whiffle. He is officially evicted from my head. 

I remember waking up feeling annoyed and sticky. The heat was rising again, much to the air-conditioned joy of channel eleven’s smiling hairdo, or “meteorologist.” I’m sure the “fun in the sun” weather helps her plastic coating gleam flawlessly for another season. Blazing coffee on my blistering lips swishing around my sweltering tongue seemed redundant, so I skipped my morning caffeine insulation. I shaved and put on people clothes because it was too hot for my lemur costume. Kisses and telepathic groping transpired between my wife and I. Promises of returning with mechanical wind and frozen treats were made. My child ran out to see me off and I patted his head, instructing him to hunt the floating chicken heads until I got back. If only I’d listened to his cries of protest instead of stroking his fur lightly.

There was no incident between the time I skipped downstairs to when I entered my car, but only because the creatures in the other apartments were still slumbering from their last feeding. I popped my Candy Yam and the Dump mix CD in the stereo and hit asphalt. The first thing I noticed was an unpleasant looking woman taking up my driving space as she crawled down the road in her 1980s Astro van at 1mph. She was shouting something in Spanish at a flaccid-faced girl on the sidewalk who appeared to be staring at a pole. I pulled into the street. The waddling van pilot had the nerve to look at me as though I was inconveniencing her! She accelerated to a rushing 3 mph and turned the corner. My mind was flooded with images of pursuing the woman, running her off the road and pelting her with mustard packets until she lost consciousness. Then I remembered the climate control situation in my apartment and resumed my mission. 

I drove down the endless street, wishing a hydrogen bomb would drop on the city. All the buildings caked in the crust of skin flakes and urine would look much better as radiated dust particles. The people on the street with their loud voices and asinine conversations would be whisked away before I snap my tongue in celebration. This is no different than what I usually think about while driving. In fact, I call this fantasy “Hydro Snuggle: Fourth Sequence,” but this time something didn’t feel right. The people and structures really did begin to fade away and not just in my imagination. A fog of tingling brain fuzz crept in from the outer edges of my peripheral vision, devouring everything. Aside from the static, all I could see was a row of palm trees. Two mental gears clicked hard enough to leave my mind blank as I sat at the stoplight and stared at the trees. 

“Trees are pretty,” I thought. 

My cognitive faculties instantly snapped back into place. Trees are pretty? What the fuck was that? Something was wrong, very wrong indeed. Then it hit me like a runaway wheelchair - my brain was operating without any type of drug or chemical substance. 

The terror of my situation nearly plagued me to the point of sickness. I knew I had to get to the store immediately. Already I had begun to notice strange changes in my environment. The people on the street and in their cars were once brainless jangle jockeys, but at that moment there was a startling transformation - they were thinking. It wasn’t just random contemplation either, they were all thinking about me. I don’t know how I knew this, but I could feel their newly developed thoughts diddling my mind. A man who looked exactly like Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was in a truck directly to my right and he was smiling. Smiling! At first I thought he was happy because he got his Asian-eyed novelty glasses for half price due to the costume shop’s new Cambodian owner and his desire to clear them out of the establishment as quickly and profitably as possible, but no, that wasn’t it at all. Mr. Roon was smiling because he was fantasizing about tying me to the back of his truck and dragging my corpse down Pacific Coast Highway. Without hesitation, I made a sharp left at the light, leaving Mickey behind forever. 

One block from the store I witnessed the mutated lifeforms confabulating with one another about the most effective ways to kill me. I rolled up my windows, praying to Xenu to keep their air from infecting me. After three minutes the inside of my car became a rolling can of meat and sweat. My clothes were sticking to my skin and I began to fear that my brain would bubble out of my nose. Reluctantly, I rolled down the windows and gritted my teeth to filter the air. The store was in sight and with it, my hopes of regaining mental stability. 

Dreading my next move, I opened the door and exited the vehicle. My ears were instantly assaulted by the collective waves of other people talking. As usual, the voices were mashed together into an incoherent babble of mindless hullabaloo. This time, however, a few phrases broke free from the cloud of chatter. I heard a voice yell, “Not there! To the left!” Obviously a sniper was trying to focus in on me. If they were going to shoot me, they would have to work for it. I began taking irregular steps that varied in speed, length and height. Bobbing my head up and down was just for fun. In the distance I heard another voice yell, “That’s my nigga!” At first I was befuddled by this declaration. I didn’t know this man, so logically there was no way I could be his “nigga.” After a moment of not thinking very hard, I realized “nigger” or “nigga” if you will, has switched meanings yet again and is now defined as “Joe the conspiracy target.” On any other day I’d stop to ponder how the word would be spelled, given its new definition, but people were out to kill me. I quickly shimmied myself inside the store. 

Someone in the control room must have been in on the plot to snuff me out. The second I walked into the store a bright light blinded me. They were attempting to disable my already scrambled senses with beaming lights and shitty, uptempo pop music from the early 2000s. More determined than ever, I raced across the store, gathering my desired purchases in alphabetical order. There was an old woman fondling liquid soap down the aisle from me. She had a bottle in each hand and was slowly weighing the store’s entire inventory. Her plan was evident to even the most feeble mind - she meant to poison me with soap and wanted to get the most value for her buck. All around me frugal shoppers thirsted for my blood. 

I arrived to the back of the check out line only to find more people plotting to murder me. Why!? Why does everyone want me dead? I close my eyes and tune out the six screaming urchins clinging to their mother’s leg directly in front of me. Of course! Everyone in line believed killing me and dismembering my corpse would intimidate the cashier into honoring their expired coupons. These people had obviously gone insane with delusions of super savings and ritualistic sacrifice. I knew the only way to counter their fiendish plan was by hollowing out their bodies and planting trees in their open chest cavities. 

No! I have to stop thinking about trees. They were giving me ridiculous ideas about digging out ribcages when the rational side of my brain knew the gardening supplies were inconveniently placed on the other side of the store. My only option was to grab my keys and stab randomly at the homicidal cretins. I felt someone’s breath and knew they were within touching distance. These fucking people and their oxygen intake disgust me! Just as my fingers looped around the key rings my plan was halted by a voice that called “Next.” I abandoned my key plan and walked to the counter. 

I smiled politely at the person behind the register. There was a bleary, weary dullness to their eyes. Focusing my mental radar, I could not sense an urge to kill me in the cashier, only a nearly broken dream of escape. Wishing her luck among the twisted grunters, I paid as quickly as possible and vacated the phosphorescent stucco cage. The eyes of a thousand conspiratorial murderers followed me as I rushed into my car. Cracking open a can of concentrated caffeine, I guzzled the liquid normalizer until it was empty. I took long, deep drags of my cigarette, letting the chemicals nest in my lungs. The fog in my head was still there, but was thinning to a tolerable degree. This would hold me over until I got home to the half-empty bottle of vodka that’s been in the fridge for four years. 

Stubbing out my cigarette, I noticed a shift in the terrain. The plotting, savage eyes of those around me began to lose life as their jaws slackened. I could no longer feel any homicidal plots or, for that matter, any thoughts emanating from them. Trees faded to the farthest point of the landscape’s background, replaced by smudged concrete and layers of mold. The world around me was no longer bizarre and dangerous; it was once again stupid and silly. I turned the key in the ignition and breathed a sigh of relief in the knowledge that I was going home. 

If chemical deprivation can have such an adverse effect on a psychologically well-adjusted person like myself, imagine some weirdo walking around with no mind-altering substances in their system. Sadly, I know there are people operating heavy machinery without chemicals dancing in their brains. This isn’t the way the world should be. Drugs shouldn’t be legal - they should be mandatory. Everyone needs something. Whether it’s booze, pot, meth, caffeine, pharmaceuticals, PCP, mushrooms or a plastic bag of ammonia, something needs to be present. People are only tolerable with external static surrounding their senses. If everyone took the extra time to snort a crushed pep pill or chug fermented prune juice the world would be a peaceful wonderland. Or maybe we’d all just end up killing each other. Oh well. It was going to happen anyway, at least this is faster and funner. 

All About Excrement

There’s something permeating every fabric of existence. I know you can feel it, smell it, taste it and hear it. It’s everywhere. It resides on our clothes, in our coffee, under our thumbs and on our shopping carts. With powerful monocles we can see it dancing on the wall and tickling our faces on a faint winter morning. When we eat a sandwich, what are we really eating? Is it possible the universe propels from it’s continued reproduction of matter? We are byproducts of people who existed before us as they are of people who existed before them. So on and so forth, moving beyond people to different species until we reach the origin. We were all created by the universe. What some see as a big bang I see as the largest bowel movement in history. 

Existence is shit and shit is existence. We all came from others shitting us out. Before them, animals shit animals and some of the animals morphed into two-legged, featherless parrots. Even the earliest microscopic lifeforms were created by the cataclysmic outfall of an esoteric asshole splattering existence all over the bathroom. There is nowhere to run. Eventually, you’ll run into feces. You can’t hide from it because it is everything. Meadow muffins live beyond the meadow. 

It’s a sunny day in San Franshitsco. Everyone is so courteous they tell you how to live your life even when you don’t ask them. A fun day of sightseeing is ahead. Let’s stroll down the Civic Center Station and catch a ride to various parts of the city. What’s this? The escalator’s broken? This will not stand! I refuse to walk upstairs! Unfortunately, options are limited. The escalator is packed with human feces. Vagrants create a makeshift home of the transportation system, sleeping in  stairwells and using the place as an outhouse. As I stand on the escalator and wait patiently for it to function, I’m left wondering how much shit it takes to disable a machine. The squishy anal babies must have overpopulated the internal mechanisms, drying to the gears and prohibiting life from moving forward. It’s what babies do best. 

Speaking of babies, a woman named Sarena in OK City injected hers with fecal formula for two and a half years. Silly woman - that’s not how you make a shit balloon! Her defense attorney, Mr. Box, tried using a diagnosis of Munchausen syndrome prescribed by two mental health providers, but the judge couldn’t swallow that much shit. Sarena was sentenced to fifteen years - one year for each of the thirteen times the infant was hospitalized with poo-flu, plus an additional two years for the duration of the abuse. Can anyone really believe this was Munchausen syndrome? It’s possible that the woman craved attention from having a sick child, but isn’t it more likely that she wanted her daughter to be a miniature version of herself? Nothing ensures secondhand immortality like having a carbon copy around. Sarena, like so many people, is full of excrement. Her body uses shit the same way mine uses blood. To make a baby Sarena, she had to inject the infant with brown bottle juice. 

Sarena could’ve taken a cue from Weusi in San Diego. It wouldn’t have helped her case, but it would’ve made Court TV watchable. During his trial for robbery and assault with a swinging rock sock, Weusi became agitated when the judge refused to tell the public defendant to go kick rocks. At a time like this, you can either regain some footing in the trial or continue to fall. Every move should be planned carefully. Using conceptual imagery to express his conflicting views with the judge’s interpretation of justice, Weusi took out a bag of shit and smeared it across his lawyer’s face and in his hair. Once his lawyer was sufficiently glazed, Weusi chucked the remaining feces at the jury, hitting someone’s briefcase. I can only imagine the emotional and financial damage inflicted on the owner of that briefcase. The lawyer probably suffered too, but that’s hard to care about. 

Unlike Weusi, Mr. Fike from Fargo couldn’t wait for court. The Fargo PD were called to the old man’s house because of a loud party. Those wild senior citizens and their boisterous festivities! I’m sure it came as no surprise to the police when Mr. Fike dropped his pants, shit on the floor and began kicking colon scraps at them. The defense attorney argued that Fike was denied access to the bathroom by the police. This refusal fueled him into dumping on the floor to show them he was serious. He also stated that Fike was trying to kick the shit under a rug and not at officers. By his reasoning, toilet denial serves as a legitimate launching point for Fike’s shit-kicking fiasco. I believe his motivation, but refute his excuse. If he wanted to prove a point, playing sphincter lump soccer with cops was not the way. He should have squeezed out his anal vomit in a tupperware container on camera while holding a copy of a current day newspaper and reciting the pledge of allegiance. Then he could take it to a lab, get it classified as feces and publish the results online, exposing his case to a wide world of five page viewers and blowing the lid off police brutality. 

I wish I could say it’s only hell-raising old fogies frolicking in feces, but sadly the youth also play with slosh ploppies. Hormonally challenged youngsters in Maine are jitterbugging away on a dance floor of goat droppings. Kelly Jo the softball coach knows how to stay hip with half-sprouts even when she's hazing them. In 2004 she took her team to a farm and had two of the girls do the “Sheep Shit Shuffle.” A year after their cakewalk through mammalian feces, the coach took her team back to the farm, but this time they had a choice. The girls could either ride a ram, eat sheep shit or stroll through a fecal field. Kelly Jo put a lump of post-digested animal snacks in each girl’s hand. I’m assuming this was for good luck. They took off their shoes and began promenading through a field of dreams and excrement. Kelly Jo was fired, which I think is outrageous. Those girls wanted to walk in shit. What other excuse is there for not riding a ram? Kelly Jo sued the school, insisting she was only fired because she’s a lesbian, which makes sense when you follow the numbers. We have a nation bursting with fecal fetish coaches, but how many lesbian PE teachers are there? Can you even count them on one hand? I thought not.

It looks as though this is the age of excrement. Kids are dancing in shit while listening to auditory bowel spasms they call “music.” They’re also huffing feces to get high. Permit me to sound like a dusty old fuck-stain for one moment, but when I was an adolescent I didn’t need to puff on a brown spliff to get wasted. Like all healthy teens, I drank and did drugs. Some things never change, but before I incriminate myself further, let’s get back to the matter at hand. Even though Jenkem came out a few years before bath salts flourished, I believe it’s still popular with kids. This assumption is based on a sound logical principal - kids are shitty, therefore they puff on shit. Many skeptics believe the process of plopping ass pudding and piss in a bottle to expand your mind was nothing more than a prank dreamed up by some bored trickster. Whether or not it was real or a hoax is irrelevant. People will try anything as long as you say it with a straight face and use three syllable words. Even if it was a joke, I’m sure many people inhaled shit winds after the word got out. If I were to say that cutting your forehead open and filling the wound with rabid dog puss had psychotropic effects and a hundred people read it, I think roughly half of them would try it. Not that they should. That would be terrible and nobody would benefit. Now that I’ve made a negative exclamation absolving me from legal responsibility, I’d like to add that if anyone out there does try it I would appreciate them recording the act and sending me the video so I can post it online and laugh at their stupidity. 

For anyone out there thinking they can live a cleaner existence by not dancing in feces or going near cloudy syringes, think again. Airplanes are shitting on the world as we speak. One neighborhood in Indianapolis was a dumping ground for metal Pterodactyls. The FAA said this was due to birds, not planes. I’m willing to believe them. It’s not like the FAA would have a biased interest in denying the possibility of planes dumping red-speckled shit bombs on unsuspecting residents. In Snyder, NY  brownish yellow goo fell from the sky. This happened during the winter season, so most of the houses were adorned in seasonal shitcicles. Sidewalks as well as the sides of houses were also covered. The FAA again denied the possibility of airplane dumping, but this time they weren’t alone. Some woman who owns a house on the street said this has happened to her before. She claimed it’s actually fast food eating seagulls that shit on the residents. Apparently, seagulls can feast on whale vomit for days without incident, but a couple of french fries turn them into flying turd bombers. Incidentally, I’m going to start dumpster tipping at burger joints in this state’s coastal regions.

Birds, metal or otherwise, aren’t solely responsible for raining shit down upon our already crappy lives. Honeybee feces was responsible for yellow rain that afflicted Southeast Asia in the 1980s. Symptoms of infection included bloody vomit, bloody diarrhea, rashes, blisters and even death in some cases. Initially, the US government thought it was caused by Soviet chemical weapons, but analysis of the yellow rain turned their faces red. One government official refused to speak with reporters, another said they had not read the study and another laughed it off as a joke. Among the more technical data collected on the yellow rain, the fact that pollen was detected in all the samples proved bees are just as menacing as communists, if not more menacing. 

An excremental upset can come just as easily from below as above. Sometimes our streets have a little too much to drink and have to vomit the excess. One of society’s greatest wonders is a busted manhole and the resulting sewage geyser. Why go to Yellowstone Park when you can wait for an aging sewer system to malfunction? There’s nothing quite like scat shooting in the air to scatter the homeless and make way for street sweeping. I know when I see the the ground belching a stream of shit I can’t help but feel awed by the efficient complexities of our modern world.

Given the feces in the air and under our feet, it’s not a stretch to think a person would want to ensconce themselves in an airtight bubble and escape this shitty planet. Unfortunately, you don’t have to visit Kabul to get covered in dung. Demodex folliculorum and D. brevis, commonly referred to as “eyelash mites,” have set up a colony around your eyes. Like all lifeforms, they have waste to expel. Unlike most lifeforms, many mites aren’t able to discharge their feces while alive, so it doesn’t leave their body until after they die. In fact, feces from rotting mites has been linked to rosacea. It builds up in the pores, literally making people shit-faced. While you may be safely removed from the external excrement of the world, your fecal colored lenses are darkening with each passing moment. Every time you blink you’re batting mite feces into the air you breathe. To make matters worse, the oxygen and mite shit cocktail you just inhaled won’t even get you high, so it was all for nothing. 

If there is no escape, we appear to be trapped on a ball of rotating crap. We live in a world with shit that swims in our water and soda alike. It’s a planet of fecal obsessed dieters and European shit porn where people defecate in dressing rooms and the British don’t wash their hands as often as they should. Instead of recoiling at our toilet of an existence, maybe we should accept it. Maybe shit was the way it was meant to be. Fecal transplants cure certain colon infections by pressing rewind during the shit scene, so who’s to say a lump of excrement doesn’t have it’s place in life. If we’re all crapped out of a woman’s vagina and we’re all made in the Lord’s image, perhaps there’s a heavenly, omnipotent shit monster above us, looking down on all of his shit children and nodding in approval. Or maybe there is no benevolent shit god and we’re all just pieces of shit circling through space on a shit ball’s cosmic journey. In either scenario, shit is the only constant, therefore shit is the only thing we can trust. If you feel unsure about your life or where you’re headed in this chaotic sewer we call a universe, try asking yourself one question:

“Have I done everything possible to be a shitty person?”

From where I’m sitting you have. So have I. We should all be proud of ourselves.

Symbiotic Chatter Gaggle

Nature isn’t an idealized balance of function. It would be nice if the strongest, smartest and fastest thrived, but the world refuses to grant wishes. Too often it’s the weakest and stupidest that seem to make up the majority of the population. Rather than relying on talent or ability, swarms of parasitic lifeforms band together in an effort to prolong their codependent existence. Knowing their own merit only comprises a fraction of a valid humanoid, they morph together into a congealed abomination with an incoherent hive-mind. A vague, bacterial pulse beats through the group, instructing each cog to throw its inferior weight against anything threatening the collective. 

People are parasites. 

History is littered with examples of anemic-minded finger pointers who were absorbed into an assembly’s black hole. Once they’re initiated into the bowels a faction, a complete detox of individual ideas and perceptions takes place. All apprentice pieces to the structure are filled with the group’s objective after they’ve been stripped of their former identity. This process requires little time. Anyone seeking a group has little to no personality of their own to begin with. After they’re fully initialized, the newcomer immediately blends in with even the most seasoned affiliates. Soon they all look and act the same, projecting the image of a larger living being, overshadowing the reality of scattered weaklings standing on each other’s shoulders. 

Each peg is responsible for two duties - reaffirm the existence of other units and cry out against anything compromising the performance of their machine. A jamboree robot can’t function properly if one of its components is malfunctioning. Similarly, the hive monster can’t operate when one of its appendages is rotting. This is why the cogs will continually reinforce one another, no matter how ridiculous or stupid they appear to be. Keeping each cell healthy enough to expel the host body’s propaganda is the diseased conglomerate’s internal function. The external function involves collectively destroying outsiders who pose a threat. Whether this threat is real or imagined, whether it’s defined by an act of aggression or by being different is of no consequence. The moment one of the drones identifies menacing outsiders a message is relayed to other group members. Once that message is received the pieces band together and mindlessly try to exterminate the external foe without question.

Assaulting the outsider can take place in both the physical and non-physical realms. In the physical or “real life” arena the act usually involves ganging up on an individual and accosting them. This practice was more common decades ago, but in our contemporary world an increasing amount of outsider assaults take place in the non-physical sphere. One advantage to this is that more group members can be obtained from a digitalized planetary pipeline than from a centralized location. Another (much less admirable) advantage is the lack of physical repercussions that comes with a digital lynch mob. 

This phenomenon is known as “online justice.”

People who would normally condemn historical examples of large groups persecuting individuals don’t see themselves as contradictory when cheering for internet crusades where many people harass and bombard individuals. Their idea of “justice” is systematic verbal assault on anyone who doesn’t think like them. Whether they’re signing online petitions or sending anonymous, poorly spelled messages the goal is clear - destroy that which is not like them. Unlike the honesty of one person annihilating another for survival or personal gain, the group eviscerates individuals for the collective wellbeing of its members while simultaneously labeling the act as “justice.” Aside from the fact that justice is an abstract idea used by most people to express a merging of revenge and ethics, these people see nothing unethical about many swarming to attack one. Incidentally, ethics are a lie. If you’re going to pretend you have ethics, at least be consistent. I don’t think being a hypocrite unethical, it’s just unattractive. 

The weakness within conglomerates is the members themselves. While the image of a large group may look intimidating, it’s important to note that each of its appendages is fickle-minded and lacks the persistence to see anything through. Destroying one of these congealed clumps of excrement may appear to be a big job, but in actuality it’s only a series of small tasks. In fact, given the waning will most of the group’s members possess, merely decimating a few of the human allotments will send the rest of the group running. Or they’ll just cry “Bully!” While it’s important to eradicate these blobs, it’s just as important to distance ourselves from them. Don’t claim “justice” or “bully” while dismantling them. The simple truth is that watching them get hysterical and scatter like the cockroaches they are is fun and fun is its own justification. 

Then again, given the clumsy back and forth mental dribbling that passes as a thought process for these vermin, they’ll most likely devour themselves the second an external enemy is gone from sight. No matter how much verbal stock they put in “we” there will always be more vested interest in “I.” The reason these so-called people join a group in the first place is out of self-preservation. It’s only a matter of time until the safety they feel in numbers leads to complacency. Popularity and self-validation is the only thing they care about, so it’s not that far of a stretch to envision them tearing each other apart for the title of queen bee. 

I don’t care how these dullard syndicates are destroyed so long as their ribboned existence is dumped into an active volcano. I’ll whistle while I work as I shovel what’s left of them into a fire mountain. As they clumsily tumble into Pele’s sizzling earth wart, I’ll wave goodbye and smile at the prospect of a life without them. Everyone will benefit, including them. All the anxiety of a life outside of lava will literally melt away. They can be forever bonded to each other without the taxing mental effort of convincing themselves that they and their comrades are leading a worthwhile existence. With the exception of magic underwear, nothing good has ever come from a rube trying to think.

Shopping For Humanity

What if you could end suffering by purchasing one box of pink popcorn? Would you buy it? 

If you answered “no” you’re clearly an unfeeling, reptilian sociopath with absolutely no regard for others. What’s wrong with you? Can’t shell out three dollars to end world hunger? Haven’t you seen the commercials of sad children with glistening eyes? I guess you just don’t care. People like you disgust me. How can you look at yourself in the mirror? You selfish fuck. Unlike you, I think a lot about the state of the world and how my actions affect mankind. I’m a good person. In fact, when I look down my nose at those who don’t make other people’s problems their business, I know that my erect ego is justified because it throbs for humanity. The struggle for a better world will not wilt as long as I can toss symbolic tokens at those in need without directly inconveniencing myself. This world needs a hero. It’s time to get active and get involved!

I’m going grocery shopping. 

The first thing I notice as I enter the store is a crying child with a skinned knee. I laugh for several minutes until my attention returns to the matter at hand. The next item of interest hits my senses like an adrenaline injection - wine that cares. Ordinarily I prefer my wine in a jug, but this isn’t about getting drunk and gluing pictures of animal genitalia to the store’s greeting cards. I’m on a mission to help people. This bottle of compassion will show the world that I’m a caring person and rub my refined palate in the faces of cretins getting hammered on mouthwash. Almost as important as my spiteful intentions is the wine’s humble altruism. It’s not enough to toss change at causes; people have to know. Advertising your humanity and pimping weak people’s sympathies is how we’re going to change the world. 

If I’m going to guzzle empathetic booze nectar I’ll need something to wash all the care out of my mouth the next morning. Only unwashed guttersnipes get their water out of the sink. In a civilized society we drink from a sealed container. As with everything else, however, luxury is not enough. I don’t just want my water to replenish me while elevating my socioeconomic status above an Ecuadorian dirt farmer; I want my water to save the world. Only a brand named after one of the three artistic proofs can satiate my thirst for a better tomorrow. If anyone had a strong moral compass it was the Greeks. Look at how much they loved children. It would be foolish and cynical to think this company would simply tack a name on a bottle without living up to the implied ethics of that name. Five cents for every one dollar and eighty cent bottle sold goes to help clean water sources in poor countries. That’s a mammoth nine percent! I think I’ll buy two bottles. Those poverty stricken third worlders can now drink easier with my ten cents floating their way. 

When I reached the frozen starch aisle I remembered dinner was on the list. A box from the food igloo informed me that the east coast was plagued by a light drizzle of rain. Luckily, someone’s doing something about it. Proceeds from the frozen cheese noodles provide citizens with cheddar pasta from a lunch truck. I think it’s so fitting and appropriate that mac n’ cheese is being fed to all the downtrodden souls on the other side of the country. When noodles soak too long they become limp and flavorless and I suspect that’s how many of those people felt when Splash Mountain erupted in their cities. It’s not fun to taste rubbery. That’s why we pat the heads of the new homeless and fill their tummies with processed love. The truth may be there in the morning, but tonight we can feel good about ourselves. We did something that will result in a photo shoot of smiling noodle-kaboodlers wrapped in blankets. If only we could help them with their atrocious accents. 

Dinner may be acquired, but breakfast still needs to be taken care of. We eat candy for breakfast at my house. Where can I find something sweet for myself and all of mankind? My ethical dilemma is answered when I approached the next aisle. Candy for a cause. Fun and delicious aren’t validated based on their own merits. They need to stand for something. The candy I buy is going to build homes for people. Don’t question the necessity of building new, low-grade domiciles when there are so many empty houses. Being altruistic means never questioning anything. Warm hearts are building candy coated homes for the less fortunate. How could anyone question that? If we strive for universal charity we can have gumdrop chimneys and chocolate foundations. I want to live in Candyland. Don’t you?

Let’s see - we’ve got alcohol, water, dinner and candy covered. I’m going to eat it all at once, vomit into a plastic container and see if I can start new life by letting it sit in the sun for a week. All scientific benefits will of course be donated to the most fashionable cause being clicked on and reposted by internet dullards. My recipe for a new culture is not close to being complete though. I need something that moves in a static state. The experiment requires a substance that will cause a reaction among the formula’s other variables. I need soda. My opportunity to save the human race is only ten feet away. Some shaky old man obstructs my path so I knock him to the floor. Make way for compassion old man! I’m trying help people! The can tells me that it’s helping polar bears and I feel a little disappointed. Just kidding! I don’t have feelings. At that moment I realized that I could be getting in on the beginning of a new charity for a new humanity. Make no mistake, the ice caps will melt because of nocturnal wombats emitting helium into the atmosphere. Polar bears will naturally surf their way into our cities. People, being debased perverts that I’m nevertheless trying to help, will have sex with them, leading to a new bi-species population. Polar bears may not be people yet, but in the future I’d like their halfbreed offspring to know that I helped out by drinking carbonated syrup water. 

As I make my way through the snack aisle I see cluster of menacing tortilla chips wearing matching bags. After talking to one of the bags it’s made clear to me that the chips in question help gang members and ex-cons go straight. “Jobs not Jails,” the bag tells me. By eating chips and salsa I can make it possible for these troubled people to find an emotionally nurturing turf and remove tattoos of numbers from their flesh. I’m sure these sensitive and inkless ex-bangers will have no problem making the transition in a thriving economy full of pyramid schemes and part-time only job opportunities. How could it go wrong? The program was founded by a priest. Maybe God spoke to him through a vat of flour. I’ve had existential revelations while watching home shopping channels, so I can believe that God the Almighty Sky Goblin spoke to the priest. If it’s not reason enough to help gangs change out of their adorable matching outfits consider this - a tree grows in Mexico every time the Virgin Mary bites into a tortilla chip. 

Interestingly enough, it’s not just the food I eat that goes towards helping people. All two of my friends and family members can tell you that I like to walk around with loose cereal in my pockets. This is so I have something to throw in homeless people’s faces when they ask me for change. I follow this up by shouting “Let them eat flakes!” It costs a pretty penny considering all the cup-rattlers here in La-La Land, but I suppose happiness has its price. I was turning the aisle when I saw a boxed solution. My good times can finally have a good cause behind them. Now every box of cereal I buy can go to a company that helps children eat breakfast. Apparently people in the world care whether or not kids are happy and healthy. I find this notion baffling, but if I’m to erect an image of myself as a kind humanitarian I have no choice. I must listen to the empty words repeated and conditioned by the masses and go along with it. If children have to eat so I can pat myself on the back, so be it. 

I pass the food igloos once again because I refuse to travel unless it’s in circles. Out of the corner of my eye I spy a bucket of hippy ice cream. Normally I would never purchase a hippy product because hippies are children of fungus and have poor hygiene. Besides, I can always mix LSD in regular ice cream and share it with the seniors at the old folks home. In this case I’ll make an exception. The tub of hippy cream in question is paying lip service to gay marriage. If you made a joke out of the previous sentence you’re a backward-minded homophobe that shouldn’t be allowed to breathe in a progressive society. When I see discrimination, I do something about it. How could I possibly witness wiener-whistlers and clam-kissers having a hard time and not eat ice cream?

On my way to the check out line I see a bottle of juice sitting on a loaf of bread. Damn businesses cutting back on employees! It takes half an hour to pay for your groceries and now we have squished bread! Where will it end? Right as I was gearing up to wallop the manager with monkey bread I noticed it was no ordinary juice. This elixir spreads the goodness by planting shrubbery, fighting tit-rot and helping people on islands where the ground dances. My shopping experience became a religious experience as I reflected on all the people who will lead better lives because of my juice purchase. The thankful masses of tomorrow will write songs about my endless generosity and compassion. 

As I ride the grocery cart to my car I can’t help but wonder how many movies future generations will make based on my selfless exploits. Somewhere in the future a monk sheds a single tear because he’s looking at a mural of my face. Will they know that my sacrifice of half a Saturday was all for them or will they think that I did it for present day humanity? Only time will tell. I was considering writing a letter detailing my endless generosity to the Nobel Prize committee when I was approached by a homeless man. He belted out a make-believe sob story about being a wounded veteran. I couldn’t believe the gall of this man! Here I am, with a basket of proof that all the world’s problems have gone away and he thinks he can scam me out of money. I had to interrupt him halfway through his grift. 

“Pardon me sir,” I said, gesturing to my cart, “I don’t mean to be rude, but how dare you make up such a ridiculous story! Can’t you see by my cart that the world is now a better place for everyone?”

He looked at me with a blank stare. The truth always stops liars and charlatans in their tracks. 

“And furthermore,” I said, “I’m highly offended that you took the plot from “Apocalypse Now” and tried to pass it off as your life. People died in that movie. Show some respect!”

With that said I got in my car and left him staring at the sun. The nerve of some people! Sometimes I can’t believe that someone would try to take advantage of others, especially after I’ve created a utopia at the supermarket. I’m sure the rest of humanity will cheer my good deeds almost as much as I have. Most people will appreciate the hard work and sacrifices I made today. They will know that in a world of problems I and my grocery list were the solution. 

You’re welcome.

Say It Loud, Say It Proud

People who talk loudly give credence to the term “justifiable homicide.” It seems like every time I’m trying to read, sleep or stare at dust particles someone with a megaphone for a larynx is proclaiming trivialities outside of my window. The way they sashay around, gabbing at unreasonable volumes to a world that doesn’t care is an embarrassment to any organism capable of creating sound. If aliens came to Earth the first thing they would hear is some inconsiderate moron chattering away about what an ambiguous “he” or “she” said and why saying such a thing is “not cool” and “hella fucked up.” The aliens would get back in their ship, leave our planet forever and dash any hope I had of escaping this shit-encrusted world and it’s beady-eyed inhabitants. God I hate loud people! They’re even worse than those half-witted, breathing mannequins who stand in the middle of doorways because they don’t know that a door is a vortex between two destinations and not a place of rest. 

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who feels this way. Raymond from Eugene, OR retrieved his shotgun and fired at four people talking loudly outside of his apartment. They were keeping him awake and considering the side-effects of sleep deprivation, I’d say he had just cause. After Raymond unloaded he went back into his apartment, called the police and lit a cigarette. Two of the noise farms ended up in critical condition while one listed as being in serious condition. The forth was treated and discharged. Instead of telling Raymond “Better luck next time” or informing him about nearby shooting ranges where he could practice his aim, the police arrested and charged him with assault! For what? Attempted pest control? Ridiculous!

You know what else is ridiculous? Movie theaters. Why pay eight dollars to sit in a room fuming with the collective bodily stench of two-legged cattle to watch a recycled, uninspired ninety minute shit-reel from an industry that stopped producing consistently passable movies in the the late seventies? Let’s assume that someone is willing to put up with all that and they have no problem watching the current, squishy teleprompters that call themselves “actors.” The last topping to collapse that vomit sundae would be some loud, obnoxious speaker-face commenting throughout the entire flick. James from Philadelphia was trying to enjoy a movie, but some wooly-twat named Woffard (yes, that’s his real name) kept talking out loud. Throwing popcorn at old Woff didn’t have the desired quieting effect, so James took out a gun and shot Woffles in the arm. And what did this war vet get for his attempt at community service? Twenty three months on house arrest and five years of probation! In Kent, WA a guy named Yong slapped a ten year old who wouldn’t shut his pre-pubescent flap-hole. Some say that Yong was wrong, but I say that kid deserved to get gonged. When Yong first approached the loud kid and his friends, he told them to stop talking and throwing popcorn. The children, who shouldn’t be allowed in public anyways, laughed and continued their annoying behavior. That’s when Yong did what the kid’s parents should have done - smacked the rude out of him. The fact that Yong was charged with second degree assault instead of getting his own talk show will bother me until the day I die. 

At this point I think it’s become obvious that people who talk loudly exist within a class of stupid all their own. Is it any wonder that loud-talking is a side effect of serious head injuries? I’m sure someone out there is saying, “No, this isn’t true you jerk! I just have a large larynx. I came from a family where everyone talks loud!” 

I’m sorry, but my ears are now bleeding after enduring your booming pleas to my non-existent sense of empathy. I’ve been stuck on this paragraph for twenty five minutes because I can’t get your skull-grating voice out of my head. Who’s the jerk now? If you don’t think loud people are stupid, consider the case of Richard, who I will refer to as “Dick” from this point forward. Dick was a fugitive dicking-around in Delaware. He was wanted on two open warrants in Maryland as well as failure to appear in court for felony theft and violating probation. Intelligent fugitives of justice know the key objective in remaining free is to keep attention away from oneself. So how did Dick get roped in? Fellow patrons at the Traveler’s Rest motel heard him talking loudly on his cellphone. Dick was so loud that the other motel guests were able to learn who he was, leading them to call the police. Authorities were finally able to get their hands on Dick. 

It would be one thing if loud people would admit they’re annoying and say “Pardon me” when the decibel level of their voice rises to absurd heights. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Not only do loud talkers not feel shame, they seem to take pride in being irritatingly loud, especially when they’re in groups. There was a guy named Ralph from Queens who experienced this firsthand. Ralph was a Viet Nam vet, but I doubt the war-ridden jungles he experienced could adequately prepare him for the horrors of being around loud people. He was riding a subway from Manhattan to Wall Street on his way to work as a souvenir vendor. During the trip, he had the misfortune of being within earshot of eight girls clucking away at the sound barrier. According to Ralph they were so loud that “You couldn’t hear yourself think.” He turned to his friend and said, “Those girls must be retarded because they can’t hear each other talk.” I’m going to have to disagree with Ralph. Although it’s natural to hear someone talking loudly and assume they’re retarded, I don’t think it’s accurate. Retards are far more enjoyable to be around than loud people. Even though retarded people can get loud from time to time, rarely are they loud all the time. Yep, mongoloids are superior to loud people. Anyways, the loud bitches heard what he said and began beating Ralph until one of them stabbed him in the shoulder. While being taken away by police, many of them were smiling, flashing gang signs and generally being loud cunts. 

Obviously, there’s no way we can co-inhabit the world with loud people. They will never show consideration towards the rest of us. If we allow this to continue, they’ll never stop blasting the bass of their shitty music or talking loud enough for anyone in a five mile radius to hear. Something should be done about these subhuman amplifiers. For the sake of our collective ability to relax and enjoy a quiet evening without the fear of shattered eardrums, I think I know what action needs to be taken:

Funnel Face Speech Therapy

Speaking into the narrow end of a bullhorn allows the sound of one’s voice to become louder as it travels through the horn’s conical shape. The sound vibrations do not scatter. Instead, the vibrations stay together before exiting the horn. If we were to reverse this process, the sound of a person’s voice would become fainter. The horn would still keep the sound vibrations together, but since the person is speaking into the wider end of the horn their voice would have a narrow escape, limiting the decibel level that projects into the open air. Clearly we can all benefit by strapping the wide end of an oil funnel to the faces of loud people everywhere. Not only will we be spared onslaughts of loudness, but the aesthetic value of our social landscape will be vastly improved. Loud people will look like creatures out of a Bosch painting. Who wouldn’t want that?

Given the newly found muted speech of the former loud person, it may be difficult to read their moods and emotions. To rectify this problem, we will attach a balloon to the narrow end of the funnel. As the speaker gets worked up, the balloon will expand. As the balloon gets bigger, the speaker’s emotional state will be visible to the other person. When the speaker relaxes, the balloon will gradually deflate. If the speaker gets emotional or excited enough to pop the balloon, they will have to register for a new one with city hall since all balloons will be confiscated to avoid fraud. If a person pops four balloons in a month they will be issued a citation that could result in a four hundred dollar fine and/or up to three months of incarceration. 

Funnels will have to be worn at all times, but balloons may be removed for meals, so long as the wearer documents the duration of time in their funnel log. Since the person can’t take off their funnel, food will have to be mashed into a trough. The loud person will put their head in the mush and suck it up through the meager hole in their funnel. Some people will naturally question the necessity of using a trough. The trough will house enough mashed food for up to fifteen loud people. I believe that watching them peck at mush like the birds they are will provide a great source of entertainment to nearby elderly bench-sitters. 

In a patronizing effort to strictly enforce the funnel law while simultaneously paying lip-service to individual freedom, we’ll allow loud people the option of bypassing the funnel with surgery. After signing a voluntary medical release form, the loud person will be prepped for operation. The doctors will knock them out and begin work on tightening the patient’s larynx. I have no delusions about this procedure - many people will probably die from it. However, there are more than enough people overpopulating the planet, so all’s well that ends well. Then again, maybe not. Honestly, I don’t think many people will go for the surgery. The odds of dying are high and there aren’t too many brave folks out there. As such, we’ll have a lot of plastic beak-faces walking around. 

There’s absolutely no reason we should accept things as they currently stand. The problem of loud people can be resolved with a little effort. Let’s make a law and enforce it. I’m not usually the type of person who advocates laws or encourages following said laws, but these loud people have gone too far. With each passing day the auditory holocaust of their collective voices continues to wear away at the sanity of others. They know what they’re doing and they don’t care. These people declared war on us the second they opened their amplifying orifices. What’s the point of living if the quality of life is consistently downgraded by people who are too dumb to realize what a terrible place they make the world? Freedom of speech protects what a person says, not how loud they say it. If we’re not brave enough to control these vermin who broadcast everything to everyone, we’ll live in a world where our ears and sense of ease are assaulted on a daily basis. This is their fault. They brought us to this point and that’s not very nice. 

The Way It Should Be

I have a happy city in my head. This vibrant metropolis has never externalized into the collective reality shared by most people, yet it remains more genuine than the real world could ever be. The aim of it’s existence isn’t perfection, but perfection is inadvertently achieved. Only that which is funny or interesting is allowed within our borders. It’s called Silo City and I’m there now with my wife. We’re sitting on a bench outside of our house which is really a gazebo linked to an inflatable castle. We lean forward and sip psychotropic lemonade out of an unmarked jug. Our furry child is frolicking in the sun a few feet away. I think he’s killed his fill of moles for the day. He’s keeping them in a ten foot pile outside of our house. Once mole hill reaches a mountainous size we’re going to open it to the general public as a ski resort. 

As you may have deduced, most of the buildings in Silo City are made of silos. I guess you learn something obvious every day. None of us were willing to put in more than a week of construction, so we stole low-level, mobile silos from several northern Californian farming communities. I’d say that roughly seventy percent of our city is constructed from these storage facilities, though there has been a consistent evolution in our architectural landscape. For instance, we shine blinding lights in the air every night. If we’re lucky, a plane will fall from the sky and we’ll have a new bar by morning. On the southern ridge of town resides a cluster of studio apartments that were once school busses. Those kids never came back from that field trip. One guy tried to build himself a house out of lumber, but we burned it down. That thing was a fucking eyesore. We tied him to a giraffe and banished him to Castroville, CA. He lives among the artichokes now.  

Our roads are dug in wavy ten foot patterns of hills and valleys. We were going to pave our single lane highway, but decided it would be more fun to coat the streets in Teflon. Nobody drives cars. Instead, we all ride high powered go karts adorned with spears and knives. Due to the staggering death rate, driving while intoxicated is not only legal, but highly encouraged. It’s rare that a person uses these roads to go somewhere. Most of us use the catapult to get across town. “Kart Jousting” is what the roads are typically used for. The winner of the joust is the person left alive after the midair crash. They’re declared king of the road (for that day) and are awarded a muffin basket. 

Pap’s Flaps and Pork Emporium is the only restaurant in town. As advertised, they serve nothing but pancakes and pork products, both of which are deep fried in a vat of butter and candy. Pap built it himself out of rocks and sea shells. He used royal bee jelly to seal and shape it into a two story pheasant. The structure’s in a sitting position, so you enter through it’s open beak. There’s a plywood sign on top of it’s head where, written in crayon, it says “Pap’s Flaps and Pork Emporium - Whites Only.” I feel like I should explain the sign. Don’t take it the wrong way, Pap is as kindhearted as he is barnacle ridden. All races and ethnicities are welcome in his fine establishment. He just happens to call his customers “whites” because they’re doused in cooking oil and flour the moment they step through the beak. This is in case they have a heart attack while eating his culinary masterwork. If someone dies in Pap’s, their body is thrown out back to bake in the sun. Once the corpse is fully breaded, the blue jays will come and feast for days. 

All drugs are legal in Silo City except for antibiotics. We don’t want that poison scourging our fair community. Other than that, there are only two rules:

1) No talking loudly. 

2) Mind your own business. 

Since everyone in Silo City is up to no good and wants to get away with it, we all follow the two commandments voluntarily, eliminating our need for police officers. We don’t have a standing army either. Both positions would require being employed and waking up before 1 p.m. and nobody wants that. Besides, we don’t need a military because we have the Blue Shield. The blue jays that eat breaded corpses behind Pap’s restaurant believe we’re their gods and providers. They would do anything for us. Along with their feverish loyalty, they’ve also acquired a taste for human blood. Birds fight our wars for us. We’ve yet to lose a battle, which is impressive considering that Mongolian acrobats once tried to invade our land. We didn’t even have to walk very far to reach victory. Just toss some crumbs on your enemy, whistle the tune from “Three’s Company” and watch the Blue Shield peck your problems away. 

We don’t get many tourists thanks to the sulfuric acid sprinklers we set up outside of the city, but occasionally one or two still get through. Last week a hipster rode into town. He was wearing a shirt with a horse on it even though he was clearly riding a mule. I guess he was trying to be ironic. We killed him. We had to. He kept blathering about Wes Anderson movies, his new iPhone app and how much he wanted a “cuppa.” I won the coin toss, so I got to scalp his overgrown facial hair, which I tied to a bottle rocket and launched into space. After a lengthy trial of finger-pointing and childish name- calling, we took the prisoner out to Trilobite Lake. We dressed him in a veal suit and through him in. After about ten minutes one of the trilobites came on land and vomited a pair of nonprescription glasses. That was a fun day!

Trilobite Lake was formed ten months ago. A meteorite landed on the eastern outskirts of town. The crash left a crater about one hundred feet deep and a mile long. At the bottom of the crater was a strange purple glow that was visible for miles. There was only one logical way of determining if the meteor below would cause us harm - pour soda into the crater and see how much it fizzles. When we did this, not only did the soda fizzle, it shot two hundred feet into the air. Naturally, we were all very concerned and we did intend to do something, but then it started raining, so we all danced and forgot about it. The heavy storm lasted for a month and by the time it was finished the crater was full. Only a faint shimmer of purple glow remained under the leagues of water. We washed our hands and declared the problem solved. A few weeks later I was spending the day drinking wine I had fermented from hallucinogenic berries. I collected a bucket of roaches and force-fed them steroids and amphetamines. When they grew to only twice their original size I was naturally disappointed, so I threw them into the lake. Perhaps it was the lake’s floating spores or maybe it was the roach’s new marine environment coupled with the drugs I gave them. Whatever the cause may be, those insects grew to the size of puppies and took on the features of trilobites. They also grew a taste for flesh. At first we were worried they might come to land and eat us, but then we noticed they had developed gills, so we let them stay in the water. Another problem solved. 

Of course, it’s not just natural wonders and architectural achievements that make Silo City a utopia. For one thing, our library is composed of five silos all sitting on top of one another. Each silo houses a different level of interest. The first two are composed of fiction, both regular and unfiltered. Level two houses a plethora of nonfiction and scientific publications. Silo number three is nothing but comic books. Level four contains records and movies. Finally, we have level five. That’s where we take people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and extreme dementia. We tie them to a table and force them to write what they see. It’s estimated that in one to two years we’ll have either the greatest or worst novel of all time. What the library has is worthy of merit, but it’s what it doesn’t have that makes me happy. There’s no Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski or any other self-serving, pseudo-intellectual ego-drip that calls itself art no matter how poorly written and conceived. There are certainly no novels involving vampires going to high school. There is a popcorn machine. 

If you’re thinking about starting a family, go somewhere else. Silo City has a zero tolerance policy regarding human children. In the event a human child is found they are immediately dropped into the bottomless pit. Let China worry about them. The only minors we allow are cats, dogs or any other furry little mammals that play all day and look good in little hats. We like to let them roam free throughout the city and do as they please. They also get to vote. Reptiles are tolerated, but they don’t get to vote. We are not a society that believes in equality. Land mammal supremacy! In terms of new humanoid life, we have a hot tub filled with growth hormones and caffeine pills. Also, a witchdoctor place a fertility curse on it’s bubbling insides. Anytime someone dismembers a body part we throw it in the goo and wait four to eight weeks for a new life form to emerge. For instance, there’s this naked frog man that hops around the city. Last year he was hopping on his imaginary lilli pads when his big toe was bitten off by a wily bandicoot. The frog man kept begging us to sew his toe back on, but we wouldn’t allow it. That’s not the way things are done here. Life begins at dismemberment. After an extensive dip in the life-tub a little ball of flesh and puss with the head of an owl flopped into existence. The owl-toe boy now rides on the frog man’s back as they hop to and fro as father and son. 

Every year on September 11 Silo City has a festival to honor our good fortune. “Suck Sector 7” is an annual town festival, not a homosexual orgy. We’ve had some issues in the past with people who misinterpreted the flyers, so I just wanted to clear that up. Anyways, a large portion of the city is cleaned of debris and immobile mutants to set up chairs, desks, cash registers, construction sites, computer monitors, classrooms and department stores. We all dress like Mormons and pretend to work and live in a normal city like we did in pre-Silo days. After about fifteen minutes someone will declare “This is fucking stupid!” At this point we all stand up, change out of those stuffy clothes and walk thirty feet north. When we get to the field of dandelions and broken glass we’re all given squirt guns filled with moonshine, 3-D glasses, experimental pharmaceutical pill necklaces and one pot cookie each by the provider, who is made the provider because their name was drawn out of a hat. The world famous bluegrass/industrial/polka/punk/smooth jazz band Candy Yam and the Dump play a twelve hour concert with no interruptions. We build ourselves individual forts out of old mattresses at the start of the show. Once we’re inside the mattresses we consume, fornicate and throw rocks at other forts. When the Suck Sector 7 festival was first conceived we all knew the one flaw every event shared was being around other people without some kind of barrier. I think all social gatherings would be improved by getting rid of all those unnecessary people. 

Life here is godly and wonderful. With each passing day I feel myself withdrawing from the collective reality of the outside world and into a secluded land of candy and fire. As I stare down the hole of a trapdoor spider I feel my consciousness drifting down into Silo City. There are no dull moments, no endless debates about things that don’t matter, no passive-aggressive people who live miserable lives; there’s only fun and adventure. Life’s meaning was always a mystery to me, but now I see it was here all along, resting inside my skull and waiting for me to acknowledge it. The outside world has melted away. I no longer answer phone calls, check email or leave my apartment. There’s a growing stack of bills and letters in my mailbox that I’ll never pay or read. I live full-time in Silo City now and this is a place I intend to live in forever.