Part Five (unprinted)

Originally published on this site Mar 8, 2008

Seldom is heard a discouraging word…

Watch Reality TV! Watch the people that are trying to be a model, trying to be a designer, trying to be Donald Trump’s bitch, trying to be in the band, trying to marry Flava Fave, trying to live together, trying to get back together, trying to win money on TV…

Watch the Entertainment news! Watch celebrities having babies, wearing beautiful clothes, working through rehab, trying to be Donald Trump’s bitch, talking to Oprah and Regis and Jay and Conan and Florence, battling with photographers, having more babies, selling their designs at Target and Kmart and Macy’s, making movie deals, breaking up with their spouses…

Watch the commercials! They’re funny, they’re clever, they’ll give you something to tell your friends, you can laugh at all the side effects, you can lose weight, you can get your dick bigger and harder, you’ll see that having cash makes you a loser but buying stock in Hong Kong is cool as shit. You can have the cool car, the cool clothes, the cool cologne, and you’ll get laid.

Watch home shopping and paid programming! Certainly there’s not enough jewelry in the world, not enough workout devices (so you can lose weight), not enough ways to make HUGE money in real estate, not enough gadgets…so all these programs are there to let you help bring more of this into the world.

Create your myspace page! Add your photos, your videos, your background pictures, list all your friends and chat them up! Blog about your life, post the latest picture where you and your friends are out getting wasted. Pick your font, pick your color, get sick of your font and color and change it! Go look at your friend’s page, and your friend’s friend’s page – send them a message telling them how HOT they look.

Watch the youtube videos! Watch the music video, watch how fast Rubik’s cube is solved, the nifty domino video, the snippets from the TV program that you missed, the part of the interview where the guy just LOSES it, the death scene, the video where the guy plows his snowmobile into [whatever], the fight that breaks out, the horrors of the natural disasters, the video where the chick TOTALLY disses on the other chick.

Have a drink! Have two! Have three! Get high! Smoke another bowl, another joint, take another hit off the bong, take another hit of Ecstasy, get more crack, get more crack, get more crack, do another line of coke – hell, do another eight-ball! Then have another drink! Have some jell-o shots! Tequila all around! Another Cosmo, another kiwi-caramel-mocha-raspberry martini!

Hop in your car and drive to the store, drive to the mall, drive to the market, drive to the gas station,
drive to work, drive to your friend’s house, drive over to see your mom and dad, drive to the coast for the weekend,
then hop in your other car to drive around just for the sake of driving around and being seen in your other car,
then drive home so you can drive around some more tomorrow.

Buy the shoes. Buy the DVD. Buy the CD. Buy the video game. Buy the i-Tune. Buy the on-demand video. Buy the porn. Buy the strap-on. Buy the knick-knack. Buy the furniture. Buy the tablecloth. Buy the photo frame. Buy the laptop. Buy the 50-inch HD television. Buy the Wii.

Play your video games! Play the role where you kill human after human after human. Inject yourself into the programmed universe where you have the weapons you want, where you can steal cars and avoid the police, where you can almost make it look like you’re actually bowling or playing tennis, race in the fast virtual cars, play football and basketball and baseball. Spend hours and hours and hours setting up your teams, your look, your weapons, your styles, your choices…

…then go online and play with your friends! Have them sit at their systems wherever they’re sitting and you sitting wherever you’re sitting and commune online to reach the common goal of finding the treasure or killing the zombies or killing the Nazis or killing the humans or killing the robots or killing the aliens or killing the evil overlords. Enjoy the camaraderie of working together while actually being miles away from each other, all of you sitting and staring at a screen.

Get your ink! Get that picture you want on your chest, the obscure Sanskrit phrase that says how joyful you find your life on your forearm, the flower, the butterfly, the devil, the icon of your choice fused into your skin! Pierce your nose, your eyes, your lips, your clit, the underside of your cock. Adorn and bejewel your body so everyone knows what you’re like. Wear the tight shirt, the hip-hugging jeans that you’ve taken such care in making look used and old and scuffed and worn, show your cleavage, show your ass, show your bulge, your necklace, your rings, your bracelets (including the rubber one in that color that shows that you’re behind a cause).

Do it all. Fuck it. Make your money then spend your money. Have your fun. Tell everyone who you are and what you’re all about and what’s important to you.  Demand your life, your time, your fun, your good times. There’s nothing to worry about. Sure, you’re scared as ALL FUCK about all kinds of things, and there’s really no one around to help you out or tell you it’s going to be okay and you’re all alone in this world, but that doesn’t matter and it’s not going to change, is it? So take what you can, and let the other poor shits work their own problems out.

Let’s have a party. Let’s get wasted and dance and drink and smoke
and laugh at how stupid it all is
and how much a CHOAD that guy is and that bitch can just suck my dick, see if I care…

All of which might lead the attuned to (with thanks from this site):

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.

Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose D.I.Y and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?

People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget – Spud is shooting up for the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid. At least, we’re not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you’re still nowhere near it. When you’re on junk you have only one worry: scoring. When you’re off it you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can’t get pished. Got money: drinking too much. Can’t get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships and all the things that really don’t matter when you’ve got a sincere and truthful junk habit.

For the record, I don’t have a junk habit.

Ain’t sayin’ I don’t have habits.

Everyone’s got their junk, they just call it somethin’ different.
Some manage more than one, I s’pose.

Thanks for the virtual ear.

Philip