Oh, David, We Hardly Knew Ye

December 5, 2006

Dear Ms. C. Heather Brady:

I write to confirm that I am resigning from my position as sales clerk and photo lab technician.

Although there is no written contract of employment between us, I accept that we have a verbal agreement and that my notice period stands at two weeks. Please be assured that I will do all I can to assist in the smooth transfer of my responsibilities before leaving.

I wish both you and Ritz Camera every good fortune and I would like to thank you for having me as part of your team.

Yours sincerely,


Egbert Souse

My Future is Tedious

Who the fuck decides what is and isn't correct for a style guide? The faggots...

I have two days to re-edit 10 stories for our newspaper release, and it ain't looking good.

I just realized, though, that I bet my colleagues have not redone 10 photos, either.

My dream to save myself from the curse of mediocrity is so quickly becoming a reality.

All I want to do is change the world. Is that too much to ask?

A Personal Milestone Soon to Be Achieved

Next Saturday, November 25, 2006, will be my personal anniversary.

It will be exactly five years since I last touched Heroin. Or sex.

Hopefully, I can make in intact.

Unless some exotic bitch wants to help me begin my misery again. I won't put up too much of a fight.

It's Finally Really Getting to Me

It used to be, it didn't matter that I was single. And it still doesn't. Things are changing, though.

Everyone I am friends with... everyone... is in some sort of relationship, now. They have couple parties. The do couple things. They invite me. I go for five minutes. I leave.

And it's in my own house. Not even a week ago, at my house there was:

J & J
D & K
G & B
A & K
S & R...
...and me.

Needless to say, I was in bed by eleven. At least, I was in my bedroom. I was awake until four listen to them all giggle like schoolchildren.

To make it worse: the day before, I misinterpreted a sexual advance and fucked it up. You don't catch on for even a second, and a woman clams up. I've seen it happen a couple of times, and this time it was blatant. She hasn't spoken to me anymore than chitchat since.

And all the girls I like... eh, fuck 'em, I guess...

felines and the canine lenny

came home at four am to strange cat meowing at me. same cat from last night. cute. my mother is still awake and one of our cats was a victim of manslaughter. our dog broke its neck. i hated that cat, but i am severely fucking depressed over it. the strange cat has adopted us and is now inside the house.

i was going to leave monkee here but now i fear for his life. i'd take seismo, too, but he can take care of himself. he really can.

there is nothing worse on this miserable planet than a dead cat. nothing.

i hated the way he meowed ceaselessly at 2 am in this throaty meow like he had a spit bubble in his throat. his stomach felt like mayonaisse and his hair was falling out. his head was way too small for his large body and he was just as ugly as sin.

poor thing. i am sincerely going to miss him, and i feel bad for my mom, too.

on the bright side, the article in the oracle about lushforlife.com is proving to be a smashing success.

i have to learn that whenever there is good news, there will always, always be bad news, too.

damn, i'm depressed, but i'm hopeful about the future.

i'll miss you, andy.

First

1
I was twenty-six when I realized that I was going nowhere. I am twenty-six, and I realize that I am going nowhere.
Growing up in a city like this, Tampa, is kind of like growing up a middle child for everyone here. Mediocrity is the standard, and to live outside of it can be bad business. The bums are spit upon and the tycoons are hissed at. Being perfectly average in every way will get you… nowhere.
I was never average in any way. I could start at the top and end up at up at the bottom and still never hit average in between. Lucky for me, average is not what I ever wanted to be.
2
How I got to this point is, you know how your mother told you to never do drugs? Well, listen to her. No matter the drug, be it huffing magic markers or smoking crack out of used medical glass in a condemned house in the scariest of ghettos, you should not do it. From the puff of the first joint, your life is forever changed. You have, at that point, become someone who is using drugs. Even if you never touch them again, if someone asks if you have ever done drugs, you cannot honestly tell them no, and the way they perceive you is changed.
My first was an innocent joint in an appropriately picturesque alleyway. Right then and there, my life would take a completely different direction. At the tender age of fourteen, I at once understood Pink Floyd, tie-dyed shirts, neon posters, primal hunger, and the basic principles of philosophy. Funny enough, I don’t recall actually getting stoned, but I doubt that would have mattered much. I could have been smoking a cat turd and the same revelations would have become apparent. The intention and acceptance is enough to fuck you up, right then and there.
The decision had been made a couple of weeks prior. See, the three years before, I had done pretty much nothing except grow my hair, learn guitar, smoke cigarettes, and listen to Nirvana. That was it. That was what I did and all I cared about. Matt and me would jam out some tunes in his small bedroom with no a/c, and those tunes were magical. They were three chord symphonies that I was sure would one day make me an icon for the damned, the teenagers of America.
That decision I made, you know, that decision to throw everything ever away (at least the first step of which), began because of a fucking rock star martyr. Worth it at the time, yeah, but in retrospect, how fucking dumb.

My Shit Don't Smell Like a Mission Statement

I am beginning to forget shit and quick. I am writing the very uninteresting but hopefull colorful story of all of me. Truths will be told, and boy will they hurt (mostly me, I'm sure). I am going to publish it here as I write. Revisions will come later, but I need a driving force to keep me on it every day. It will change in tone constantly until I find the voice it is going to be presented in. It will suck most of the time and not suck at other times. It will never be finished. I hope to learn about myself a bit more. This may take years, this may take months. I don't know how much I can pull out. It starts when I am fourteen, which is where I think things began to go sour. I will talk about my younger years later, I'm sure. The chronology is not important, nor are the numbers at the beginning of each section. I hope no one reads it. I hope everyone reads it.

P.S. The staff of LushForLife.com was interviewed today for the USF Oracle. We will be in the paper tomorrow. Read it.

If I Understood That, We Wouldn't Be in this Situation, Now, Would We?

It is all finally falling apart. There are no extreme or even definite signs, but I see it happening. And a good bit of it is my fault.

At the same time, I think my insanity is becoming evident.

I am growing away from my friends, and they from me. I am stagnant, as are they, but they think that their faux-success is being built upon their pointless school careers. I am an idiot because I can’t follow the rules.

I don’t like any of them, and I mistrust all of them.

Every word out of my mouth is a lie.

I don’t even trust myself with my feelings, anymore.

---

Last night, a girl hit on me. I ignored her. She wasn’t my type. I have been sans women for five years and I ditched her. So sue me. Be true to yourself, eh? Being true to myself is, on instinct, denying any woman who is blind/stupid/insane/slutty enough to hit on me. I only want what I cannot have.

I cannot have that beautiful Cuban girl over there, or that perfectly exquisite woman who is set to marry that guy over there, and I cannot have that fantastical fantasy on the left coast. So that is what I want.

I think it all comes from a slut wife who cheats on you. I hope she’s fat, now.

I Heart Me

Today, I made a 16 by 20 inch poster of my own face. Is that wrong?

I Can Read Burroughs, but Not a Woman

Click! I know what it be. I need to be assaulted, or else I have no idea. None at all. Endlessly have I interpreted that for this and this for that. Subtle nuances and subtlety is not a game I play well. I need Miss "Letsfuck, stupid" to hang with. Otherwise, I am a dumb dumb fuck and that's all I ever be.

The LushForLife.com One Year Anniversary Story

LushForLife.com Turns One

(That’s 42 in Internet Satire Years)

Dearest Reader,

In the turbulent world that is independent Internet satire, a year is a long, long time. A lot has happened as LushForLife.com looks forward to its first anniversary, next Tuesday.

Children have been born, icons have died, wars have begun, and the great debate of the superior sports star has sparked.

Zombies invaded, sharks attacked, rapists ran rampant.

Companies merged, formed, and one local pedophile opened a daycare center.

There has been love, hate, government standoffs, penises on lawns, and lost spatulas in space.

God has died and the battle for his kingdom endures.

We’ve learned new words, like dudebro, poop soup, brobonics, and sup.

Tom Cruise even made the news. There were real interviews with real people and fake interviews with fake people.

News has been weird, inane, ludicrous, boring, exciting, perplexing, and, most of all, insightfully funny.

We have doubled our staff of contributors, and haven’t even paid any of them a dime.

We have worked very hard to bring this site to you each and every week. We hope you have enjoyed it thus far, and look forward to bringing you the latest and greatest in cutting-edge Internet satire for years to come.

Eat your heart out, competitors; we’re here to stay!

Love,

Egbert Souse

I Hate Doctors, er... Nurses

My doctor used to have a beautiful office; a baby blue farm house cum office building. Quaint with a twist of old fashioned sensibility. How times have changed...

His new office is right down the road in a strip mall, with a team of receptionists and a (I shit you not) scheduling department. So, of course, my doctor does not have time for me, anymore, and sends his nurse lackeys to do his dirty work.

Nurse Assface (I think that's his name) is, well, an assface. I went in for a checkup two weeks ago. Here's what happened: my blood pressure reads at what can only be described as "perfect," and, well, that's it. Healthy as a horse. Of course, of course Nurse Assface has to find something anything wrong with me because he is, well, prejudiced against fatties.

He sends me in for blood tests and urine samples and palm readings; whatever he could use to show me there is a problem inherent in the fat under my skin.

So, I go, today, for the results of my tests, ready to hear "cancer" or "diabetes" or "AIDS" or "rabies" or anything. Here's what happened (thanks, Athena):

So, Doc, what's wrong with me? High cholesterol? High blood pressure? High blood sugar?

Well, your blood pressure is perfect, your cholesterol is fine, and your blood sugar is a little on the high side. That means diabetes.

I have diabetes?

No. Your blood sugar is just a little high.

Oh. Okay. Well, good. So, we're done, then?

You need to lose some weight.

Okay. Fine. I'll get right on that.

Have you ever considered surgery?

What?! No! I've never even tried to diet and you think I should put my future at stake on, let's call it what it is, elective surgery?!

Okay. But no human being should weigh more than two-hundred pounds.

Really? What about every athlete ever?

Well, you're not an athlete.

No, I'm not, and I'm also not morbidly obese, as proven by my stunning health test stuff.

But it will get worse.

Okay, fine. I'll try to diet, but I'm not going to stress about it.

Two hundred ninety two pounds is a lot.

Yes. Yes it is, but I should be really insulted that you suggested surgery. Can't I just work out more?

No. No, that won't do it. You need to do something drastic. But don't worry about it. Don't weigh yourself anymore.

I had no idea of my weight before I came in here. I don't own a scale.

Okay. I want you to not weigh yourself anymore.

I just said...

And cut your calorie intake to 1200 to 1400 calories a day.

What?! BUT I'M HEALTHY!!!

You should weight less than two hundred pounds.

Whatever. Can I have my drugs, now?

The Brady Bunch is Like Real Life

The Brady Bunch has stood the test of time. Marcia's diary is totally gone. Too bad, too, because in it is a description of her innermost feelings toward Desi Arnez, Jr. I think the diary went to a used bookstore. I'll bet that Little Ricky buys it and takes her on a dream date. I wonder if he would take her on said date if she still had on the braces from two episodes ago.

i am now digital

One step ahead of the neo obsessed Mr tillman, I have gone completely digital. This is a test for my ability to blog on the go using my blackberry. As you can see, it is accomplished.

I also got an Xl1... Digital.

I am watching a digital broadcast of the world cup final.

Digital digital digital.

The Old Man and His Balls

The old man woke up to find his balls missing. That is to say, he did not find them at all. He looked in the glass where he kept his teeth, but they were not there. He looked inside of his slippers, under the bed; nowhere.

He went to take a piss, but it would not come. His bladder started to hurt.

Old man began to panic, his heart beating stronger and harder every second. How would life be without a scrotum? His testicles played a very important role in his bi-weekly masturbation ritual. He liked to rub them with a fork in his left hand whilst his right hand jerked rapidly, occasionally sticking his long thumbnail into the urethra. It was as much for kicks as he could get at his age. He was lucky to be able to get it up at all.

Maybe they had ascended, forcing themselves back inside of his body. But how would he find that out? All he could do was shove his hand where his taint should be located. He missed, his hand going very far up his ass.

Startled, he pulled the hand qickly from inside of his shit hole. Now, his hand was covered in his own vile old man excrement.

Old man went for the phone, called his thrice-weekly nurse, and asked her where they be. She did not know, and he called her a liar.

Think, old man, think. How do you go to sleep one day and wake up the next missing your balls? He thought of his first marriage and the divorce following, and he smiled slightly.

Oh, lord! What have I done to forsake thee? Have I not been a good man? Why have you taken it from me? My manhood and my social security are the only things I have left!

Oh, Satan! You have done this to me as a jest! You attempt to poison me and turn me against god, you vile serpent! It will not work!

Old man crawled back into bed, feeling a bit like a beaten dog, tail between his legs and shit piled on the floor.

House Keeping (This One is Old)

I woke up this morning and fell out of bed onto a pile of garbage I have been using as a hiding place for the past three months. I was thinking of cleaning up the mess, but then realized that I had no reason to do so. It doesn't bother me, and I have no one to impress. Then I thought about getting a job, and I'd love to say that my lack of employment has something to do with this rebel attitude about the phoniness of the man and the corruption of the big business world, but I know that I am just lazy. I just keep packing on the pounds and talking shit about everyoe I love behind their backs. I wonder sometimes why not everyone loves me, because when it comes down to it, if I'm your friend, there is still someone else you would rather hang out with at that moment. Or perhaps that's just how I feel. I like to be put in my place, but I also like to put people in their place. It depends who you are. If you are a beautiful woman, which is what you hopefully are, please tell me how wrong I am and how fucked up I am. Let me have it. Just not now. Later when I'm not busy. Which is a joke in itself, isn't it? When I wanted to write I stopped reading for fear of corruption of originality. How stupid can I be for thinking like that? I haven't read a book in forever. The last one I read might have been "From Selma to Sorrow" or else it was "Cannery Row". That book didn't get me off my ass, I'll tell you that, because of the glorification of the bum life. Gotta love it. I think that I would have a job to take a woman out, but I don't have a woman to take out, but I don't have a job to have the money to take that woman out. I stared at my cat for a little while today, wondering what it would be like to cook him. No, I'm kidding. That's the Dead Milkmen. I wondered how wonderful it must be to be a cat, but then I realized I'm not much different. I sleep, eat, sleep, eat, socialize lightly. My cat's neutered, but I think I know how he feels. Of course, he hasn't been ruined yet.

I don't know where that came from.

This is What I Do at Work

I used to hate my friends with stiff jobs. They would bitch and complain and moan about how superior they were than their customers. They’d cry about how the customers just didn’t get it. So I’d say, hey, if you’re so fucking awesome, then why are you still working at Retail Mart making four dollars an hour and these horrible patrons can afford to buy the shit you sell, which you yourself cannot afford? They would look at me as if to say if you only knew…

So I decided that it was time to stop sitting on my ass at home getting absolutely nothing accomplished. I went to Retail Mart and got a job.

These people are so fucking stupid, I tell you. I make absolutely no money. But for some reason, Jose Schmoe can come in here and drop $1500 like it’s nothing on some shit he’s got no idea how to use. And then my buddy from long time ago who makes only slightly more than me can waste his valuable time on the weekends teaching Jose over there how to use that $1500 piece of just-out-of-reach-for-us luxury.

Then these fuckers have the nerve to ask, “What kind of Widget do you have?” “Um, they don’t pay me enough to afford one of these” I am forced to humbly reply to them.

So my poorness fills me with a slight twinge of jealously; but I am filled even more so with hatred. Hatred of these fuckers that are actually the epitome of stupidity. I wonder how it is that someone like this has a job where someone is willing to pay them enough to buy these fucking luxuries. The loudest thing that rings in my head when these poor mules come in here is the fact that their employer must make Corky from “Life Goes On” look like Steven Hawking’s illegitimate semen child, raised by one hundred of the most genius minds to ever grace our planet. All men, of course.

Sometimes I will catch myself about this, because I know some bright motherfuckers who have the social graces of the nerdiest guy from ye ol’ leper colony. I sometimes have to remember that usually the smarter you are, the more time you spent away from human beings and kept yourself locked up in a dark room with no windows reading Isaac Asimov and quoting Karl Sagen to lull yourself to sleep. Social skills are a learned thing, and you can’t very well learn them whilst teaching yourself Klingon to impress the two other people on the planet that know it. And to show the sadness of this whole mess, five will get you ten that the actors who have played Klingons for years on ST: TNG or ST: DSN or ST: V, ad infinitum, have no idea how to even say “hello” in the most basic of Kligonese. But I digress…

So my original point is that is was making me stupid, right? Well, to go along with that idea: during the many months, nay, years that I sat on my ass, I would come up with the wonderful and beautiful ideas about the progression of man and the soul and the essence of being, and I had ideas on how everything worked and others on how everything really worked. This was all under the influence of marijuana, mind you, so it never got onto paper, or, more apropos, Microsoft Word 2000. Now, however, I have this shit job. It has done many positive things. I now have a little bit of pocket scratch for which to buy pot with. Alas, I do not have time for that wonderful drug anymore. I am better able to schedule my time. I now do not have to be ashamed of the fact that I do not have a job (but I am, anyhow, because this job is bullshit). But for all of these so-called positive things, it has done one huge bit of damage that I may never recover from. I have become patently stupid. It comes from having to talk down to hosts of idiots who ride the wave of luck and money to appear to themselves to be God’s holy little corn hole and light of being. I am so unable to say squat to them. They would never, ever get it. I can’t tell one artistically brilliant dead Son of God joke because of the seriousness they emit, which has come to them by way of mass media. I can’t tell their stupid children to get the fuck out of my way and stop playing with that and don’t touch that, because they will take it as a personal affront to their child’s future id, ego, and superego.

Which brings me to this. Mothers: beat your children. Unless you want this nation of pussies to be even bigger pussies down the road and the pussy of all pussies running this fucking country in forty years, smack your fucking kid in the face once in a while. When they mouth off, when they talk back, when they disobey, when they get bad grades, when they lie, and then once in a while for no fucking reason at all just to keep them on their toes.

Why I Want to Be an Editor and NOT a Writer

Casey woke up and immediately ran to his computer. He had nothing else to do, no one to call and no one to love. He had convinced himself that if he was going to be a writer, he needed to practice everyday. At least three hundred words a day, at first, is what he decided he needed to try. It couldn’t be that hard. Bad authors were all over the place, and if he was going to be the next great American novel writer, he had better get some practice in. Of course, what was there to write about? He had no profound ideas, no greater interest in the greater good of mankind. He was stuck, trapped inside of his wonderful world of constantly getting stoned and coming up with ideas that way. But how profound or original was a stoned thought? Was it the question of how your hands can’t touch themselves, or the Great Conspiracy which loomed over all’s heads? One hundred sixty three words in less than a couple of minutes, he thought to himself. This is easy, he convinced himself. But where was the profundity? Was he saying anything important, ever? Did he need to? Was that important? What did Dean Koontz ever say that was important? But he didn’t want to be Dean Koontz. He wanted to be Jack Kerouac or J.D. Salinger or William S. Burroughs. Most importantly, he wanted to be himself, but he didn’t think that that was at all possible. Not in today’s society, where every line that could be written had been, where every thought was nothing but a rip-off of another thought. “There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before.” Only fifteen words to go, he rationalized with himself. Oh God here it comes. I’m done.

I Can Prove That I am a Piece of Human Waste (But I Like It)

The highlight of my day was, straight up, flirting with someone that I absolutely should not have been flirting with.

I am a terrible human being. I walk around as if I were hot shit (until I run into someone I know) even though I am cold diarrhea. I then blatantly hit on a girl who is almost eighteen (braces and all) and, for some reason, she buys it. Fearing jail and retribution from her family, I quit quit quit. But I will probably do it again tomorrow. And I know why I will do it again tomorrow…

Father Intintola. That is why. I love the whiff of sex. The smell of it. The thrill of it. But I am in no way interested in participating in it (not anymore, it seems). It is easier to toy with it and to play with it than it is to accept the huge responsibilities that come with it (the responsibilities that I made up in my own head that don’t really exist, that is [Thanks, Mom]). And if I send it out to a not-quite-eighteen girl, it’s just one more way to fulfill my end without actually having to do anything.

I sometimes want to throw my TV out the window, but I have never thought that about my penis. Huh.

A Sampling of My Self

This is a story I wrote for L4L:



NSA a Useless Piece of Shit
Get Outta My Phone Calls (and Into My Car)

HERE, NOW - The NSA is a useless piece of shit. I, for one, am sick and tired of hearing about some bullshit they be pullin' on the little guy every two weeks. The latest I've heard is that they are monitoring calling records. What jerks!

I am sitting at a Middle Eastern cafe, using their wireless internet, making calls to my mom to tell her that I will be home late (please!), jacking off to Internet pr0n, and secretly conspiring to go to the Apple Store, tomorrow, to get my PowerBook fixed. Does the NSA really need to know this?

Trouble is, I’ve called this fine dining establishment to order my shistawoq ahead of time. So, it’s a definite that all of my phone calls are monitored, ‘cause I’ll be god damned if not one of the regular patrons, here, has not called somebody who is linked to somebody whose sister is fucking some guy who knows a dude who washes the car of another guy who is fingering the asshole of some lady who gave a blow job to the second cousin of a boyhood classmate of Osama bin Laden.

What has the NSA learned about me? That I call work late fifteen minutes every day; I call my Senior Writing staff in a frenzy every Tuesday; I eat Chinese food on Thursdays; I don’t call my old friend Matthew enough; I ignore all phone calls from family members; I went to Gainesville and ate a pizza last Monday; I prank call 1-800-APE-RAPE at least once a month; I got into an argument with a colleague a couple of months ago, so we did not talk for a couple of weeks; and I don’t go to the doctor as often as I should.

Is any of this important information? Should your life be monitored by this useless company? Could/would they do anything if they knew something was going to happen? (The answer to the last one: No, on account of the layers and layers of bureaucracy they would have to go through in order to get anything done, including getting George “Dubya” Bush to actually read one of those fucking things.)

What can we do about it, oh faithful Americans? Nothing, of course. Unless we rebel against our governmental oppressors with machetes and machine guns, nothing will change. Ever. And if we did rebel, they’d get that good old National Guard right on us, and mow us down with their machine guns and tanks before we took out Congressman One.

Lay down and die, fellow Americans, ‘cause that’s all your good for (and paying death taxes, right, Wal-Mart Employee?).