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You’ll All Pay

© Joe Conat 2001

So, a few weeks ago I cut back on my beer. It was sort of a health thing; after the 9/11 attacks I was drinking pretty much all the time. After about Day Three of Beerapalooza work was just a blur (okay, even more of a blur…let’s face it, office jobs turn your brain into rancid jelly and nothing penetrates after eight in the morning) and I’d have about fifteen seconds of clarity before beer number nine crashed headlong into my cerebellum and rendered me numb and yet more blurry. This would usually occur about 5:15 in the evening. I stopped understanding English by 6:00 and by bedtime was no longer capable of voluntary movement. This was partially because of the astounding amounts of alcohol coursing sluggishly through my system and partially because said alcohol had been very helpful in allowing me to stare unblinking at CNN for hours on end and my entire body had fallen asleep, leaving only my eyes to take the helm as my brain was busily cataloguing its stages of dissolution into a haze of booze.

So I cut back. The first week was pretty interesting…I’d forgotten what it was like to get a good night’s actual sleep rather than just an unconscious state necessitated by several pounds of CN suppressant administered orally. I’d also forgotten what it was like to wake up in the morning on the first try; get up without being painfully aware of the Coriolis effect; see what color my eyes were without the liberal application of Visine; not have Advil for breakfast. I rediscovered things like “your tongue shouldn’t taste like that” and “water shouldn’t make your stomach hurt” and “your guts don’t normally make that noise”. Also, hey…solid waste actually being solid. Neat.

Still, part of me misses those evenings sitting on my couch not being aware of anything, not even the TV I was purportedly watching. I liked being convinced that, if terrorists decided that a two bedroom apartment in North Hollywood with stained off-white carpeting and an annoying half-beagle half-Italian greyhound halfwit dog was a crucial American target and burst in my door and shot me…I wouldn’t feel it. At all. Too numb. I might not even notice at all. Which might frighten them off. “He’s superhuman. We shot him in the gut and he didn’t even twitch. Just drank more beer. Which ran out of the hole in his gut. Which was gross. Fuck this, man!”

But when Faithful Fiancee accidentally stabbed me in the eye with a BBQ fork…well I say “accidentally” but I hadn’t taken the trash out in a week and the dog was whining to go out and I hadn’t heard it because it hadn’t involved the siren hiss of a twist off cap…she asked me politely to cut back a little. I was drunk enough to say “sure”, but I might’ve said “sure” to anyone asking to borrow one of my testicles, too, so I don’t know if it should really count.

And now I spend all my painfully aware time at work writing this when I could be staring blankly at the grey fabric walls of my cubicle timing my teeth throbs. Lucky you, dear reader.

…well, I say “dear”…

Anyway, what is it about that completely useless body-numb state that is so alluring? Back when I first started drinking…legally…the point was to loosen up so you’d be brave enough to hit on chicks. Of course it usually went way past “brave enough to hit on chicks” and sailed gleefully into “psychotic, half-naked and brandishing a power garden tool” but the point was that you’d actually be doing something. Not just sitting there until somebody kicked you and said “Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” to which your response is “Yeah, but it’s only seven—holy fuck. Have I been sitting here for four hours without moving? I can’t feel below my neck.”

Now that I am older, it appears that “not feeling below the neck” is the aim and I go for it with a single-minded purposefulness that would probably propel me to the dizzying heights of power and glory previously only attained by gods, prophets and supermodels if I were to apply it to such things as work and planning. If only such heights could be achieved without my having to get off my ass or be sober.

I guess I’m just too old to “fight…for my right…to paaaaaaaarrrTAY!”. These days I like to fight…for my right…to GET THIS ASSHOLE OUT OF MY WAY ON THE FREEWAY. But I digress.

Do drinking habits change as we age? I’d ask the adults around me except I seem to be just another example of the adults around me. Which isn’t really a good sign…it means that everybody I know seems to be just as perplexed and out of it as I am. I listen to NPR and news radio now…I stopped being able to identify bands and songs around 1992. Last time I smoked pot it made me ill. No, really…tossed up. Real thrill ride, lemme tell you. Wooho–*hackcoughhack*.

I remember waiting with bated breath for…well, for any excuse to drink, really. For three weeks after I turned 21 I didn’t go home or sober up at all. After that I suppose I calmed down, but there was still that New Year’s Eve that me and two friends…let’s call them Flash and Stretch, just to preserve their identities…excused ourselves from a boring party to “go get more beer” and ended up downtown Ann Arbor, screaming and hanging from awnings and vandalizing Taco Bell in an active attempt to get arrested. Plus nearly getting into a fight with a bunch of monstrously muscled Cro-Magnon Frat Boys because we stumbled across a party that Flash’s ex happened to be attending and he decided to give her a hard time. And we still couldn’t get arrested.

Or the time Flash, Stretch and me showed up at one of my ex-fling’s house for a party for some guy we didn’t know, and I drunkenly put my fist through the bedroom wall. That prompted a speedy retreat with assurances that we would come back (since they didn’t know what I’d done), and so we did…at four in the morning. We were let in by the ex-fling’s roommate who promptly went back to bed, leaving three very drunk and hyper maniacs alone in the kitchen with a barely touched birthday cake. One taste and I declared the store-bought cake “foul and dangerous” and we proceeded to splatter the walls of the kitchen with the cake before running off into the night cackling madly and waking the neighbors.

Now I get tired just thinking about doing that. Karaoke exhausts me and I get all irritable. Of course, that may not be because of age. It may have something to do with the extremely hammered redneck getting up to sing “American Pie” but not knowing the words. Any of them. Not even the “Bye-bye Miss American Pie” part.

Of course, when Flash and I got blitzed and got up to sing “Mack the Knife” we didn’t know the words either…but we were damn funny about it. At least…we thought we were. So did Stretch. Our girlfriends were found cowering in a single stall in the restroom.

But, as the saying goes, the more things change the more things remain the same. Like that wonderful, almost painful feeling of a cold beer hitting your stomach. The slow realization that you can hear your blood in your ears in a lulling susurrus. The excruciating revelation that you’ve just taken seventeen precious minutes of your life to tell your Faithful Fiancee that you love her, a statement she acknowledged politely once but now that you’ve said it 116 times, convinced that she didn’t “fully get it”, she is grimacing and rolling her eyes to tell you that everyone in the bar is staring at you so please shut up.

And every once in a while me and Stretch and Silencio (Flash is still in Michigan) go drinkin’. Or the Mouth Master will haul over a twelve pack of MGD and we have a rousing discussion of comics’ trivia that drives Faithful Fiancee to tears. Or N’Yawk’ll haul my ass out to a bar so I can blather endlessly about shit I really don’t know about, I mean, look at my life. You know…

…the way old men drink.

Ah, fuck. Slap me down a glass of rye and point me to the rockin’ chair. I’m gonna cry for awhile and then go price some Depends.

You’ll All Pay is written by Joe Conat. You can tell him to shut up at conat@martyandgroovechicken.com. He won’t listen but what the hell right?

You’ll All Pay

© Joe Conat 2001

In 1937, the fluorescent lamp was introduced at the New York World’s Fair. The inventor was one Edmund Germer, or so history tells us. I don’t buy it.

I’m pretty sure the inventor of the fluorescent lamp was SATAN and the actual mechanism that makes the damn things glow is not fluorescent powders activated by ultraviolet energy generated by a mercury arc, but HUMAN SOULS slowly leeched out of hapless office workers over the course of their lifeless, dull and unrewarding workday.

There is, I feel, no other rational explanation.

I work for a large multinational corporation that ships foodstuffs all over the world. Currently, I ship product to another company who ships it all over the world. This is called Third Party Export.

I could regale you with tales of horror involving certificates of free sale and NAFTA Agreements and blah blah blah, but it would only serve to glaze your eyes over and ensure that you never invite me to your parties.

Isn’t that the way with these office-type drain-you-of-your-will-to-live-type jobs? They rob you of one of the most basic staples of conversation, the “How was work today?” You can’t answer, for a variety of reasons. You can only stare, that oft-spoken-of “thousand yard stare” and mutter that “I could tell you but I would have explain my job to you” and then your fiancee, noting the twitch at the corner of your eye, just says “Oh, well…okay” and flees to the bedroom while you stumble headlong for the fridge and a cold beer and the fiancee finds you an hour later, the cold MGD clutched in both hands, rocking back and forth on the couch grinding your teeth with tears streaming down your face and growling things like “If Mexico requires that many fucking certificates then maybe Mexico shouldn’t get any fucking pumpkin at all!” and “Fucking Moses dropped the other tablet, just like Mel Brooks said, and the eleventh commandment was ‘Eight week lead time for orders, fuckhead’ and the twelfth was ‘Thou shalt not change custom laws three times in a month when I have a fucking huge ass order already on the way’” and on the coffee table in front of you is an elaborate plan to drive to Tijuana and see how many border officials you can kill with a Model B2000 Stanley Bostitch stapler, but not by bludgeoning, oh no that’s too easy, no, you want to find a variety of ways to kill and maim using several hundred thousand boxes of Swingline S.F. 1 Sharp Point Standard Staples…

Ahem. Anyway, you know…the point is the conversation is gone.

There is also what I call the “monkey factor”. This, and I’m not the first person to say this, is where you secretly know in your bones that, really, a trained rhesus could probably do the job just as well as you for cheaper. And you’d almost be willing to find out, if it meant you didn’t have to drive on the 134 behind some young, permed bitch in a new Ford Expedition with a personalized plate that includes a Y symbol and a huge decal on the back window of a yin and yang with airbrushed spiral galaxies and comets and shit in the yin and yang and she’s in the far left lane, next to the carpool lane, and is only going 55 mph so that you have to scream “Hey, Cosmic Wanderer! You wanna maybe drive FAST since you’re in the FAST LANE, you hippie bitch with too much money to actually be a hippie, but you’re definitely a bitch because you’re going slow and I’m already late so would you please just get the fuck out of my way?”

I would. Be willing to see if Boppo the Office Monkey could do my job. If it meant I could avoid all that.

You know why I’m enraged all the time? It’s a survival thing, because otherwise my heart would just stop out of boredom. This morning we had our usual month-end Capitalist Re-Education Seminar and Corporate Thought Clearing (read: brainwashing) Session where some high muckity muck told us how we did last month in the most monotone voice you will ever hear aside from a houngan’s zombie slave in Haiti. My stomach started to churn out acid and give me an ulcer, not because I was stressed, but for something to do. And Admiral Ennui droned on and on and friggin’ on about the R.I.G. and the APEX and other crap that I don’t know or care about because I long ago filled the part of my brain that could have been used to store such terms and their definitions with Buffy the Vampire Slayer trivia and DC Comics continuity. Plus, as I vaguely understand it, these things equate to how much of a bonus people get, but since I’m a temp do I get a bonus? No, sir or madam, I do not. I’m Temp Boy and Temp Boys don’t get Christmas bonuses, so does Temp Boy give a rodent’s rectum about the R.I.G and APEX? Again: no, sir or madam, I do not. Because Temp Boy’s attitude is to do just enough to keep my job another week without actually having to exert myself or think, and Temp Boy still manages to exceed expectations while using the time to write fanfic, reviews and this column.

This is why people play Lotto. As much as I may scoff at the around the block lines at the Bluebird convenience store in Hawthorne they show on the news every time the Lotto Jackpot exceeds $7.50, I chip into the office pool. I, too, entertain dreams of coming into work one fine Monday morning and being presented with a huge ass check so that I can immediately quit and buy a house and spend the rest of my days wandering around in sweatpants and my ratty bathrobe, sporting an equally ratty beard and deciding whimsically if I wanted to write that day or play Dark Forces II for the 300,000th time, using the cheat codes so I can slay stormtroopers wantonly and if I should go for the Light Side of the Force or the Dark Side, because while the Light Side lets you yank guns from the bad guys’ hands and watch them run around like panicked chickens until you gut them with your light saber, the Dark Side lets you choke them from a distance and watch them writhe dangling in mid-air before they expire with a gurgle. And either of those options is better than being stuck yet again behind Alicia “Which Pedal Makes It Go Fast” Moongopher on the 134 or receiving a call from Whiny Moronic Whore at Costco requesting 13 billion original certificates attesting that none of our products have ever been in contact with ebola-infected lemurs so she can ship 130 cases of this horrendous candy that is essentially Wonka Nerds â„¢ encased in a gumball to kids in Oaxaca Mexico and this candy has the effect of inducing instant tooth rot and cardiac arrest in adults, or can cause a five year old child to generate enough power to push the WB’s entire fall-lineup to the far reaches of the galaxy or spontaneously combust or both.

(Run on sentences make Word look Christmasy. All that green…)

I’m convinced that there is a world-wide conspiracy between every single corporation on the Earth to rob humanity of its drive. Why else would they give us bland, fluorescent lamp lit cubicles (read: cages in a POW camp) and force us to dress in business casual, which means I had to actually go to the Gap and give them money, all so I could make more money in a vicious cycle that ultimately serves…a corporation. I’m not even convinced that the CEO’s and other corporate luminaries are or were at one time human. I keep seeing slime-covered, evil skinned, vaguely humanoid demonic forms, pieces of secretarial pool entrails in their teeth, cackling evilly in a board room appointed with the skulls of temp workers and “mission statements” written in Aramaic in blood and guffawing about “year end profit goals” and how us sucker humans “bought into it.” It can only be dark occult forces at work, when you think about it.

Nonetheless, until I do something to change it like actually sit down and write one of these damn spec script ideas that fester in my head, I get up at Stupid O’Clock in the morning and eventually wander into the bathroom to shower and shave and then into the bedroom to dress in khakis and button-down shirts. Then I slog out to my not-yet-paid-off Chevy Prizm and jump onto the freeway and fight my way to Glendale through a crowd of idiots in two ton machines trying to kill themselves or me or both. Then I find a parking spot, always a challenge on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when they do street cleaning, so I park in a two hour spot for four hours (because the two hour thing doesn’t start until 9 and I get there at 7) and four hours later I go out and move it because I’ve already had my car impounded once for unpaid parking tickets so I use Outlooks appointment function to tell me to “Move your car” on those days. In between I surf the Web and write my stories and articles and try not to sound too aggravated when Whiny Moronic Bitch calls.

I will defeat these Dark Lords of Commerce one day. Just…after Buffy. Gimme another beer.

Is it time for bed already? Where does the time go?

“You’ll All Pay” is written by Joe Conat. You can tell him to shut up at conat@martyandgroovechicken.com. He won’t listen, but what the hell, right?

You’ll All Pay

© Joe Conat 2001

So, okay…I decided to write a column for Sophism (now struggling so feebly it could be said to be defunct). I have also decided that, despite Sophism’s slant towards fanfic, I will not write about said fanfic. Why? Well, for two reasons.

1.) Sophism, as a group, is about more than fanfic. It’s about writing. Sure, we mainly write fanfic…but…hey, shut up.

2.) Everything to say about writing fanfic has been said already a thousand times. A lot of those times on this site and in this newsletter. So, screw it. You wanna know my main advice on writing fanfic? Okay…take a composition course, and this time stay awake for it.

So, what should I write about? Good question.

I suppose I could write about current events, but I’m American. And Americans, as any European or Canadian will tell you, have no attention span. Some people put that down to being raised for fifty plus years on sitcoms and Budweiser commercials, plus thirty or forty years of action movies. These things have, evidently, shriveled our attention span and our concern for the outside world to a withered whiny little nubbin crying for solace and company. (Still…action movies. Hee hee. Love ‘em. I’m gonna start a Bruce Willis fan club. Seriously. One of my favorite games to play with my friends is doing Bruce Willis impersonations with the Brucester cast in a variety of unlikely roles, like George Washington. Can’t you see it? A trailer with Bruce in a powdered wig and tri-corner hat holding a flintlock pistol saying “Benedict Ah-nold? BENEDICT AH-NOLD?” BLAM. “Guess you won’t be crossing the Delaware anytime soon.” And then a shot of him crossing the aforementioned Delaware with a crack squad of black-clad Minutemen in a Zodiac inflatable raft while Don LaFontaine grimly intones “This summer…the Revolution…as you’ve never seen it before.” And then Bruce says “I’ll cut you down like a cherry tree…and I ain’t lyin’.” Cut to Alan Rickman as Cornwallis snarling “I’ll gut you like I did Monmouth” then cut to Bruce brandishing a bayonet you just *know* he hammered into shape with his fist saying “Tax this you un-representing motherfucker” and then standing all sooty and war-torn in front of Old Glory as Don comes back into it with “One Man…versus an Empire. Freedom Will Prevail. Bruce Willis IS…George Washington…”)

What was I talking about?

Oh, right. Current events, sort of. But, these days, current events consist of “Hey we’re bombing the shit out of Kabul but it’s not accomplishing anything. Oh, and be careful with your mail.”

So, what else?

Well, thank you Tony C. “Smallville”. I will talk about “Smallville”.

As I was saying to Tony on MSN’s Instant Messenger (it worked that day. Must be sunspots) “…let’s see if I understand the formula: Kryptonite produces mutant bad guy. Mutant bad guy does mutant bad guy stuff. Clark mopes about how much being “special” sucks. Has huge hard on for Lana, but fails to do a damn thing about it. Mutant bad guy does more bad stuff. Bo Duke is sage. Then Chloe says “Hey, mutant bad guy. Must be because of blah blah blah”, piecing together the “mutant bad guy” plot in 17.5 seconds with a series of wild speculations that would make Fox Mulder go “Whoa. Let’s try a little clarity-of-thought, whaddya say?” Clark blatantly saves a bunch of people and NOBODY NOTICES. Mutant bad guy traps Clark with Kryptonite, but nobody figures out that Clark + Kryptonite = Dead Clark. Then Clark gets improbably free and beats up bad guy who a) forgets everything or b) dies. The only thing I left out is “Luthor is more interesting than rest of show plus last three seasons of X-Files, but gets criminally overlooked.”"

I mean, really. Who writes this shit? It’s three shows in and I’m bored bored bored. I truly and actually thought it took Time-Warner-AOL-EveryMediaInTheWorld , a giant company, to make Superman boring as drywall, but evidently not. I forgot to factor in “TV production company”.

And I have never bought young Clark, not even in comics. “Smallville” really takes a stupid slant in my opinion; Clark wants to be normal. Now, look…I’ve been the freak in high school, I’ve been the loner because I was “gifted”. And never, anywhere anytime did I say “Gee I wish I was stupid” and I can’t imagine saying “Man being FUCKING INVULNERABLE sucks”.

But he’s all mopey all the time. Double Mope: No Waiting. And not because the town is completely infested with a radioactive element that can kill him and only him. No, because he can’t play football or something. Ugh.

Enough. Who cares? I’ll either forget the damn show existed or continue to watch and bitch like a sucker just ‘cause it’s Superman. Well, roughly Superman. More like “Dawson’s Krypton” with the worst element of “Lois and Clark: The Really Stupid Episodes” thrown in.

Okay, what else? I mean, we’ve established that “Smallville” sucks. We’ve hinted that “X-Files” sucks.

I watch too much goddamned TV, you know that?

I realized the other day that I have built my life around this fall’s season. “Oh, no…can’t Monday. Angel. Tuesday? Are you high?! Buffy, then Smallville. Wednesday, no. Absolutely not. Enterprise, then West Wing. Thursday? Maybe. Depends on if I’m in the mood to watch Friends. Friday…Friday…okay, yeah. We can do Friday. But not until eight o’clock; back-to-back Buffy on FX.”

Yeah, okay. Sad. Fine. Whatever.

See, I don’t buy that whole attention-span thing. I can watch, rapt and completely focused, several straight hours of TV. I know the TV schedule better than I know my workday schedule. I paid attention, dammit.

Outside world? Well…yes, a bit. Since Sep. 11th, anyway, but everybody’s a tad more aware now, aren’t they? “Holy shit, some bum-fuck country just bombed the shit out of us! Gimme a globe. How do you spell Afghanistan? Tally-who?”

I’m sure over in Europe some people are thinking “Thank fucking Christ! ‘Bout damn time!”

Now if they only had Sarah Michelle Gellar doing the nightly news in leather pants, pausing to dust a vampire and banter with Charisma Carpenter…see, then I’d be better informed. Maybe.

More likely, if quizzed about the news that night I would go “Buffy was cute. Mmm. And Cordelia? Oh YEAH baby…Afghani-who? I dunno. Was she wearing leather pants?”

…mmm…Buffy…leather pants…

Where was I?

“You’ll All Pay” is written by Joe Conat. You can tell him to shut up at jconat@yahoo.com. He won’t listen, but what the hell, right?