Disposable

Last week I killed a man. My first thought was about how I was going to get the blood off of my jacket. It’s a nice jacket, all army and green, now it’s all army and green with red on the sleeves and a rip on the arm. I think I’m going to cut the sleeves and turn it into more appropriate summer wear.

I got myself a nice replacement today. Bought a jacket at Sears. It was thirty percent off. I’m always a sucker for a good bargain. The lady at the cash was friendly but she had a fake English accent. Either that or she’d had a stroke.

But damn, this jacket, it’s got like a dozen pockets. I can now carry a bunch of shit with me that I won’t ever have a need for. Things like a charming personality and ruggedly handsome good looks. My new jacket, it’s brown and it’s warm but it breathes so I don’t have to worry about overheating, ‘cos that leads to sweating and that leads to smelling and that leads to no fun at all.

This jacket, it’s one hundred percent polyester and yet it looks like leather. Now I’m not one of those people that’s all anti-fur or anti-leather or anti-meat – ‘cos those people are retards – but I don’t see leather as practical. I mean, it swells and it cracks and it looks like shit if you step out in the rain for too long. And I love me the rain; it’s all cleanse-y and rinse-y. Very handy for getting the blood off of your hands without having to worry about touching something and leave behind some sort of forensic evidence.

Wait a sec. Did I just confess to murder? Ah well, at least I look snazzy in my new jacket.

Poppy Seeds

“I’m tired of giving this any thought,” I say.

Jim looks at me and rolls his eyes.

He says, “I know, it’s not your strong suit.”

That dick.

The beer sits warm in my gut and I slam back a shot of jager. There’s little buzzing next to my eye and every time that I turn to it I remember that it’s just the weed making my brain fuzzy. We clink our drinks in the timeless notion that we are not poisoning each other’s booze and turn away from the bar as we’re of one mind.

A pretty little blonde winks at the bartender and a pretty big dude swings his fist into a pretty small dude.

I say, “the fuck do we come here for?” I say, “You know that one our faces is going to end up on that guys’ fist.”

“Cheap booze,” says Jim.

I nod and shut up. Cheap booze always wins any argument. The little dude is getting pulled from the ground by his buddies while the big dude’s friends hold him back. Motherfucker’s on parole, he can’t afford another manslaughter rap.

The little dude, I should be helping him out. He is after all, my brother, but I really could care less. It’s not my responsibility if he gets a fake ID and wants to go bar-hopping. I’m just not looking forward to my mother’s frantic call tomorrow morning, waking my hung-over ass up screaming about how I should have been a better example.

Makes me want to walk over and punch him myself.

Jim opens up a plastic bag and passes it to me.

He says, “poppy seed?”

Two posts in the same day[ish]

This kinda shit hasn’t happened here in a long time. I’m typing this, but I don’t have anything to say, I think I’m just going to ramble on for a bit. Last night I wrote the first thing I’ve written in about 6 months and it felt weird. Felt like getting so used to silence then having a word break through.

Or something.

I wrote this;

It’s been three weeks since she’s been dead, but every time I open my eyes I see her. It’s not like I loved her or anything; that’s just not the way I am. It’s not like I feel guilty or anything; that’s just not the way I am. There are some things that make more sense now, like her saying; “I’ll die if you leave me.”

Things like the doctor saying that she needs love and support from the one’s closest one’s to her while she recovers. Things like the nurse I fucked saying that she hates me after she found out who I was.

If I turn into a butterfly, will Mount Saint Helen’s erupt?

All semantics, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Her stomach was just swollen from the crash, not a corpse rotting inside her, being devoured by her innards, turned back into pieces of her. It’s not like I put it in therein the first place.

The mirrors, the windows, the puddles all look at me with accusing eyes. I just wonder why they don’t mind their own fucking business. Even the spam mail I get in the hundreds every morning now glare back.

Where they used to read; “GET A BIGGER PENIS” they read; “You bastard.”

I don’t know. Maybe the word that broke through the silence came from a voice that had emphysema or something. The black lung.

I did say that I was going to ramble, so here goes.

You don’t know anything if you don’t open your eyes and ears to anything beyond your own insipid, hateful rambles. You can’t learn anything if you’re always right, there’s no point to that if you’re so goddamned convinced that you’re the top shit on a pile of lesser shit.

No such luck, there’s not a damn thing that people will actually respect you for, even the ones that praise you will, ultimately feel shamed in their core, for not only supporting you, but for believing in you. You can become a god in your eyes and maybe in the eyes of others, but that in no way makes you one.

It just makes your earnings deductible. It just makes your words fall on deaf ears, but these deaf ears are easily persuaded.

Remind yourself that there ain’t no fucking way for the world to turn that’s predetermined. There is no destiny, you are not part of some grand opus, you just exist. There is only one way that the world will end. There is only one way that your life will take, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be different, because if it can’t then you may as well give up now.

If destiny is an all encompassing entity that drives the universe along it’s twisted little carousel ride than there’s no fucking point in not going up the road; not across the street.
Destiny does not exist, but that does not mean that we can escape whatever is down the line. Choices are what shape the road we stumble blindly down, not some unforeseen dark cloud passing down judgement and tossing obstacles in our way. There is no test, no studying, sometimes we trip and fall off the path but then wherever it is that we end up landing becomes the new path.

If you look in the mirror and love what you see staring back at you, you need what some people would call a “punch in the balls.” If you look in the mirror and hate what you see, you need what some people would call a “mind altering substance.”

If you look in the mirror and don’t really care about what you see staring back at you, you need what some people would call a “big fucking ribbon.”

Life’s not about love, it’s not about hate, it’s just about surviving until you can’t go on any further. And hey, if you go through wide-eyed, good on you, son.

The Ripe Canal

The ground is flat but it rounds out the further along we go. Were they wrong? Or were they right, in all the ways that actually matter? Who knows, it actually doesn’t matter either way. Water always runs downhill and everywhere is downhill from somewhere, so hold your breath. It’s hard to breathe underwater when you’re trying to float but the oxygen helps with the floating. Can’t stop floating because if you stop floating then you become food for the fishes. Food for the fishes means food for the food of man and that would make someone, somewhere a cannibal.

Cannibalism leads to brain damage and brain damage leads to cannibalism. Good God, good food let’s eat the motherfucker.

But what’s the point of all of this? I know that there’s no story, no tale here and I’m sure that you’ve figured that out by now too. Which begs the questions; “why are you still reading?” and “why and I still typing away like a jackal reaching for the top apple of the tree of mediocrity?” There are so many questions to ask and so many past humiliations to re-live.

Kids Tip: Don’t ever speak.

It only leads to foot-in-mouth-itis. Any good doctor will tell you that. Foot-in-mouth-itis can lead to athlete’s mouth and we don’t want our mouths to run off like an Olympiad running match. Well, maybe Special Olympiad running match. There’s so much misreading there and it’s better to be humiliated by some good old-fashioned misunderstanding than the truth, that way you can still have plausible self-deniability.

Sip from the glass and wipe the boxed-wine off your face with the velvet ribbon. Because everyone gets a ribbon, we can’t have the children getting the wrong idea. We have to make them get the impression that everyone gets a piece of the pie and that everyone’s equal. When the reality of it all is, is that nobody is equal. Nobody is equal because there’s this little bastard called “money” that’s got a best friend named “greed” and they’ve got a third point in their little hate-triangle marked “indifference.” They get together and fuck the children and rape the mothers because some people just need a little more and to have a little more it means that someone, somewhere has to have a little less.

So fuck the insignificants because it’s their own fault for not doing the fucking and the raping in the first place, right? It’s a “first cum, first served” fish buffet today.

Morning!

That poor Howard.

I bet he tastes good and I know that sometimes even a vegetarian gets tempted to eat some flesh. Nothing beats a good soy steak. And if by “soy” I mean “cow” and by “steak” I mean “steak” then yes, yes nothing beats a soy steak.

And of course I mean cow steak. Why eat the placebo when the reality is sitting on your plate, having been tortured and exquisitely bled for the honour of getting turned into the juices that get squeezed out your backside? The juices go into the grass and the cows eat the grass and their own juices make the grass grow more and the cows eat more grass and then we slit their throats and eat and drink them.

Cannibalism leads to brain damage and brain damage leads to cannibalism. Good God y’all, what isn’t it good for?

So eat up Greedy Gus, you’ve got some brain cells that ain’t done been corrupted yet, Yuk-Yuk.

You know talking like this is making me a little hungry. There used to be this little restaurant in my hometown that made the best sandwiches. Actually the sandwiches weren’t the greatest, the bread was always dried out and they always put too much mustard on them, but they had the best and biggest pickles ever. I’ll bet you that they were kosher pickles.

Pickles give you bad dreams and bad dreams lead to cannibalism.

Compare a brain-damaged brain to a pickle and I’m sure that you’re going to find some amazing visual similarities. At least that’s what I’m betting on. Five to One odds baby, I’m calling Vegas right now. Don’t you dare try to stop me, ‘cos I know that someday you’re going to be placing your own bet. So you can’t step out of line today and break the mould if you want THE MAN someday. If you’re going to become THE MAN, just remember that sooner or later you’re going to have to eat from that all you can eat buffet and that would make someone, somewhere a victim of a cannibal.

You can’t deny it, you can’t play the “I won’t be a bastard” card, because everyone knows that you’re lying. I know it, they all know it, your family, your friends and more importantly, the people that you’re going to eventually push out your backside.

It’s one big happy family on this little speck of interstellar dust, this cosmic high school farce called Earth.

Incidentally, we should think up a new name. We’re totally the laughing stock of the solar system. You know that when Earth went to school all the other planets poked fun at him. Even Mars – who you know was just a big tool in school – got some jabs in on Earth.

“Hey there Earth, say, what’s that growing on your face? Life?” says Mars with a snide laugh.

“Gross, I’m totally not going to The Formal with you now Earth,” says Venus. “I’m going with Mars, he knows how to show a lady a good time and he sure as hell doesn’t have any life growing on his face.”

“Oh burn!” laughs Mars as he wraps his lips around Venus’ neck. Earth gets pissed and head-butts Mars in the face, transferring the tinniest of living creatures. But Mars keeps his face so clean that nothing can stay alive on him for long. Mars just laughs at Earth’s pitiful attempt and proceeds to get lucky with Earth’s one true love.

“Alright, fuck you guys, I can’t take anymore of your juvenile shit,” says Pluto, gunning it out of the solar system. “I’m going to Orion’s Belt.”

Then Earth cries and the oceans up heave and the dinosaurs go extinct and the crazy old bastard that locked his family away in his pleasure yatch gets to say that he got a message from God.

After formal – and after the water has settled – the popular kids still make fun of poor old Earth.

“Makeover!” says Mercury.

“A facial cleanser will take care of that nasty case of life,” he says.

“Exfoliate, exfoliate, exfoliate!”

You know that if any of the planets are gay that’s it’s going to be Mercury. He’s so close to the sun that he’s got no choice but to be a flamer.

“You’ve gotta rub the cleanser in real hard, like a meteor shower,” says Mercury.

Oh my! Wrong area.

“Wrong area,” giggles Mercury, not that he minds.

“Not that I mind,” says Mercury and then he cries out in ecstasy as the sun spews it’s hot fire across his face. He loves it like that.

And all the while Earth sits there with his only friend the Moon. But he still can’t get any respect from his only friend. The Moon mocks him every night by having a party with THE MAN and they’re never invited Earth. They hide the party every time that Earth looks around, so Earth is stuck at home every night with his Self watching the cosmic dust settle on his pickles and cow steak. Earth’s thought about switching to soy steak, but that would cut into his exfoliation time.

Earth’s just a poor young lad with a bad case of acne. Think about that the next time you see a zit in the middle of your forehead and you decide to pop it. For all you know it could be a new form of superior life, far greater than your face could be on it’s own. It is after a part of you, no matter how much disdain you feel towards it.

Which reminds me, I’ve got to go clean my face, it’s almost suppertime.

————————————–

That’s one of my favourite things I’ve written, a little snippet from Shoddy Penmanship.

The Headphone Society

I sit on the bus and as I look around I see that I’m not the only member of the Headphone Society on board. I have my headphones on and that means that I’m not going to speak to anybody, unless of course they have a cigarette that I could bum off of them.

We – The Headphone Society – don’t have meetings or anything. There is no membership fee, save the price of music. But some assholes still manage to get in free. If we had some sort of head committee we’d probably kick them out, but that cut into the interpersonal activity avoidance time.

We all ride around the biosphere in our musical bubble, oblivious to the world that moves around us. The eyes blur over when we’re engrossed in the auditory pleasures being whispered into our ears. We break the organic flow, step out in traffic when we’re not supposed to and we never pay attention when someone starts to talk to us.

And then we look at them as if it’s them that’s being the dick.

It’s not as bad as the people who sit on the bus and discuss Chomsky or other brilliant literature. For sure it’s like a verbal make-out session. You know that all they want to do is fuck each other but they’re too afraid to shut up and just dive in tongue first.

Then there’s the asshole that sits in the back of the bus yammering away on his cell phone.

“Yeah, I totally made her suck my dick.”

He says, “had to get her drunk before she’d let me drop the pants.”

As he’s laughing and grandstanding all I can do is turn the volume up on my Discman. I’d get up and punch the horndog, but there’s a good tune pumping into my ears. I’m old school. It’s a funny concept, that because I use technology based on lasers – fucking lasers man – I’m old school. I don’t like mp3 players; they go against what music is supposed to be. An album goes on and it gets listened to from beginning to end, which is why Discmans will always be my Headphone Society weapon of choice.

The woman sitting in front of me turns around and frowns at me and I stare back blankly.

I’m like, listen, its my eardrums that I’m damaging, its not as if I’m giving you ass cancer or anything. But of course I don’t say anything, I just stare into the back of her head and shake my head as I curl my lips in unpleasant manner.

She gets off at her stop and on steps a blonde with small tits and a tiny ass and a white cord dangling from her ears to her waist. They all wear the same uniform. I’d catch her eyes and flash her The Society’s secret symbol, you know, if we actually had one.

But instead I just stare out the window and watch her reflection doing the same on the other side of the bus.