========================================
*** THE INNER SWINE *** 
Volume 2, Issue 3, January 1997 
www.innerswine.com 
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"Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway" - anonymous. 

CONCEPT BY: Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita
COVER ART BY: Jeof Vita, boy-toy 
EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers 
INSPIRATION: David Cone 
ADVICE & FREE DRINKS: I don't need advice, and free drinks is obviously a myth perpetuated by the conspirators 
PROOFREADER EXTRAORDINAIRE: Karen Accavallo, performing under severe stress and pressure from the unsympathetic and occasionally mean-spirited Editor 
OVERALL OFFICIAL COOL CHICK: Lauren Strutzel

OFFICIAL SPORT: Baseball, which has more poetry than the brutish football,
more need for intelligence than the frantic basketball, less monosyllabic
goons than the white-trashy hockey, and which is only boring to those of us
raised with an attention span of a flea.

FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: Jeof Vita, who has refused to slack off when it comes
to our covers and for smelling so nice; Lauren Leigh Jennifer Strutzel, who
cracks me up all the time and whom I love very, very much; Elizabeth
Augoustiniatos, who I count on for everything and who still touches my
heart when I least expect it; Misty Sue Quinn for tolerating me for another
four months, and for missing me; Karen Accavallo, for her tireless sarcasm
and constant jokes regarding my virility; Joanie Chen (who still rules
southern California with the healing power of Estrogen), for keeping me on
the HiJinx mailing list, for recognizing genius when she sees it, and for
sounding very cool; Ken West for quietly dealing with my many quirks and
defects; RA, who is always a touchstone of sanity in my life even when she
calls me just to complain; Nic Fagan, in spite of chronic lunch 
cancellation and for keeping me supplied with dumb and often obscene jokes;
Cassie Moore, as beautiful as she is sweet, for not hurting me too badly
during her blind rages; My Mom, who remembers that if you cant say anything
nice about The Inner Swine, don't say anything at all.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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EDITORIAL: "Pig in Shit #6: The Two Minute Warning of Life (The Biggest
Wastes of Time in the Universe)"
COMMENTARY: "Fuck You, Pay Me!!!" 
FICTION: "The Happy Bastard" 
FICTION: "A Winter Storm Warning Is In Effect" 
DITHERING: "Eat Your Food and Steal Your Wives"
COMMENTARY: "Shes the Cheese and I'm the Macaroni: If Life Imitated 
Porno Films" 
NIHILISTIC PREENING: "Meet the New Boss (Another New Years Rumination)" COMMENTARY: "Big Dumb Animals (Roasting on Spits, Yum): Omnivores 
Unite and Lets Kick some Vegan Ass" 
FICTION: "Cigarette Grins"

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The Inner Swine Volume 2 Issue 3.
Magazine published May, September, and January by Oinking Sow, Inc. (There
is no company, really) Individual subscription rates: $9.00 (cheap!) per
year in U.S.; $15.00 (cheap!) per year foreign including Canada. Single 
Copy $3.00 (cheap!) plus $1.50 (cheap!) for postage and handling if ordered
by mail, or you could just send me money which would be very good karma for
you. Checks payable to Jeff Somers, Editor. Address submissions and
correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, 293 Griffith Street #9,
Jersey City, NJ 07307. I am also selling compromising photographs of
Lauren Strutzel eating red meat with what can only be described as gusto
while listening to Barry Manilow records if youre interested, cheap. All
submissions or requests for Guidelines (there are no guidelines, though) 
must be accompanied by S.A.S.E.

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WHAT THE FUCK'S BEEN GOIN' ON?
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Hello there, campers, and welcome to the sixth issue of The Inner Swine. In
the four months since 2(2), not a whole lot has changed, which shouldn't
surprise any of you. I'm more tired than I used to be, but I enjoy sleep
more than I used to, so it all works out. I am also more broke than I ever
was, despite the fact that I no longer spend all my money on wine women and
song, song having become way too expensive recently.

Recently I found myself standing in what can only be described as a bad
flashback of a dance club, drinking domestic beer and ogling women dressed
in retro seventies fashions. My friend and confidant R. A. Haberman was
there with a Bachelorette Party filled with undesirables, and she kept
sneaking away to give me updates on which one of the coven had drank
herself sick this time. By the time we left around 2AM t he Bachorlette had
lost three of her girls, brave soldiers in the party trenches, and as I
gathered my own largely sober flock about me to escape into the frigid
evening, I had a moment of quiet wisdom as we passed one delicate member of
the unfortunate wedding party, puking her dinner into the streets of 
Manhattan: I realized that in modern times having a good time has become 
something horribly akin to work. It takes so much goddam energy to have a
good time these days I rarely bother. Even the language of the good time is
exhausting: wasted, tanked, fucked up. Yikes. It seems like if you don't end
up passed out somewhere at 4AM, you didn't have a good time.

But, the growing wisdom of my years coupled with my firm belief that the
more people doing something the less inherent value it has leaves me
a-wearied of the good time. Whats wrong with a quiet couple of drinks in a
deserted bar? Why do we always feel like we have to have 5000 strangers
around us to be officially having a good time? I mean, if I'm out with 3 of
my better friends, Id rather sit in a deserted bar and drink Gimlets all
night than stand around in a crowded club with my thumb up my ass staring
at anything but the people I cannot speak to because they will not hear me.
Call me crazy, natch, call me retro, call me dull. Who cares what you
think? I like bars, I think a good tavern is almost as holy as a good
church, just without all the boring ceremony. I love the language of bars,
the lore and codes. I love walking up to a tired old irishman and saying
Give me a vodka gimlet straight up no lime with a Rolling Rock back, which
of course I would never say as that would be mixing your drinks. What I
don't like and never will, methinks, is a noisy, crowded place filled with
puking idiots.

So what did I learn? Not much, really. Just that the thrill of hearing Tony
Basils Mickey isn't enough to make me want to go back to Polly Esthers any
time soon. Oh, and that Rose Ann doesn't look half bad in a pair of deep
purple corduroy bellbottoms.

Otherwise, I have spent my time in a deep period of frustration and
cigarette smoking, which seem to always go hand in hand. I also received a
whole bunch of Zines from fellow misfits across the country, some of which
were very inetresting and some of which werent: Goth Smoth II, HiJinx II
from the fair damsel Joanie Chen stand out in my mind, the rest were
probably crap. Who can recall?

And now, the glorious sixth issue of The Inner Swine, which includes several
poems Karen Accavallo considers "self-pitying bullshit", which is an
accurate assessment, of course, but there has always been a strong element
of self-pity in the Swine philosophy. When the idea first came to me and
my (then) fellow conspirators back in 1993, of course, I had something else
completely in mind. But this isn't so bad. Until next time, remember to send
more money and not to waste your time on wasted bachelors like me.

======================================== 
*** EDITORIAL ***

PIG IN SHIT #6: 
The Two minute Warning of Life: 
The Biggest Wastes of Time in the Universe
by Jeff Somers
========================================

Pigs, you've only got so much time in this delicate existence. If you manage
to avoid all the buses with your name on it, there's probably a dark embolism
moving sloth-like through your brain. One of these days you're gonna die. Its
a rough existence, brothers and sisters, but all you can do is suck up the
slop and grin. Even if you manage to preserve your tissue-thin health you've
got maybe 100 years before you just sort of wear-out like an old battery.
100 years, my friends, is not a lot of time. Think about it: how old are you
already? Youll never get those years back, pigs, they're gone. I mean, even
if we assume 100 years for you, which is probably a joke, you've
automatically wasted the first 21 or so simply because you werent really
allowed to do anything before then, and probably the next ten years are
wastes too because lets face it, no one gets a grip before they're 30, and
even after that the angst goes on. So you probably only have a few decades
where you know who you are and what you want. Sad, isn't it?

While you cant do much to improve the situation, kids, you can, at the very
least, work to not make it any worse. By this I mean simply: Don't waste
time.

This might seem obvious, but I would like to humbly suggest that you waste
more time than you can afford, you fritter away your life in an orgy of bad
planning, bad timing, and bad taste. When you die a few years or days from
now your life will flash in front of your eyes and it will all be reruns and
hangovers and youll reach automatically for the rewind button to get a
better look at that cute girl in seventh grade who gave you your first
awkward hand job, and then youll realize there is no rewind button. Every
moment you waste is gone forever, and we are masters of time wastage, aren't
we? Don't believe me? Of course not, you dim bulbs, you're probably re-reading
the first paragraph, trying to get the jist. Let me spell it out for you:
Here are the biggest wastes of time in the universe, as discovered by a
lifetime of vigorous and uncompromising frittering by yours truly, The
Editor:

1. This magazine. My goodness, this rag reeks of wasted time. Ask yourself:
why are you reading it? Chances are its because you're either a close
personal friend of the Editor, a family member, or you're actually interested
in what I think. Trust me when I say you're not getting much out of this
magazine, except (perhaps) a few chuckles. No attempt is made to accurately
inform you. We don't even pay the truth lip service, after all. The stories
are my reject list and the art is usually stolen from other, copyrighted
sources. The typesetting is lackadaisical, the proofreading (thanks Karen)
is sloppy, and what it lacks in dullness it makes up for with insincerity.
My advice is, quit reading right now and start improving your life, maybe by
watching more Entertainment Tonight.

2. Television. Which brings us to the grand-pooba of time wastes,
television. For those of us who like to wile away their hours watching
Melrose Place, Seinfeld, or The X-Files, consider that it all adds up, and
that time spent soaking in entertainment is time you could have been doing
something else. Anything else. I could go on about how TV is a way to keep
the boiling masses under control, a mental anesthestic that makes you
temporarily forget that you're unhappy, dissatisfied, and wasting your life
in pointless pursuit of success, but I won't.

3. Education. I stopped picking up useful information in school around grade
four. The rest of my education was spent showing up, which as we now know is
99% of success. In all seriousness, education stops having any positive
impact upon you once you've learned the basics: reading, writing, basic math,
how to obey idiotic rules, how to hold your piss until given permission to
go to the bathroom, how to accept authority no matter how randomly assigned
(room monitors, anyone?), how to handle physical violence, and how to forge
signatures. After that, you're just repeating the same shit over and over
again in slightly more complex patterns, and you really don't learn anything
new until you specialize. Doubt me? Wasn't that you sitting next to me in
English 101 in college, re-learning how to diagram sentences? The fact that
I could and did re-use high-school english papers throughout college tells
us two things: a) I was doing the same crap Id been doing for years and b)
my BA isn't worth the paper its printed on.

4. Religion. Don't even get me started on something that performs absolutely
no practical service for us in life and yet requires immense amount of time
and effort. If you believe in God, fine: you are delusional and somewhat sad
but I accept that a personal conviction should not be fucked with. But why
then, in the name of reality, do you have to spend so much time on it? God
gave you 75 years to live and then asks you to waste so much of it kneeling,
praying, and engaging in sappy ceremonies? Some ultimate being.

5. People. I could have written an entire article about this. What dominates
most of our time? People. What do we spend the wee hours of the morning
with, talking? People. People cause all our heartache (with the possible
exception of: pets) and confusion, we spend almost all our time dealing with
them, the bunch of vampiric bastards. If you've ever wished to have pencils
stuck in your eyes because some old man is telling you his life story on the
bus, or wanted to rip the throat out of a chatty bank teller, or dreaded
having the obligatory lunch with your boss, or preferred screaming, painful
death to having to respond when the annoying guy in the cubical next to you
says Good morning!, you have experienced time wastage as inflicted on you by
your fellow human beings. Fear them.

6. Drugs. This should self-explanatory to anyone whos smoked a bowl and
found themselves watching the walls and eating Fritos. You don't take drugs
unless you don't feel like you've got a whole lot to do that night. This also
applies to booze, which is very depressing, but I must be honest: my hours
spent in bars drinking and smoking and trying to cop a few feels is not time
well spent. There, I said it, you bastards. The thing about drugs is that
they cause you to waste enormous amounts of time: getting drugs, preparing
drugs, consuming drugs, floating on their effects, coming down, recovering.
Just thinking about the effort involved makes me sleepy. You don't take drugs
unless you really believe you have nothing better to do, and if you start
taking drugs pretty soon you don't.

7. Politics. Many of you dear, slow-witted mongrels are likely licking your
chops in anticipation of arguing with me on this one. Forget it. Youll lose.
Youll lose because the ancient Romans thought their republic was pretty
fucking important, too, but I don't suppose any of the laws they voted in are
still in effect? Get off it. Sure, our wondrous democracy is necessary.
Doesn't mean it isn't a waste of time. I will personally sit in a comfortable
chair and eat Pringles during the election this year, and I bet I can
predict the outcome: one of the tired old men will win, and nothing will
change, except the pretty cartoons in the editorial page. Politics gives us
something to argue about, but precious little of it means anything, natch,
because if you heave yourself up and vote for Bob Dole hell like as not
croak in office after a year, which is really only a few years before
Clinton would have taken the long goodbye anyway, so whos to say you had an
impact? When Doctor Cornelius is digging our artifacts out of the ground a
millenia from now, I doubt hell give a crap who you voted for. And good for
him, you bunch of self-satisifed rock-the-voters.

8. Romance. Oi, how much energy is wasted on romance. We write poems, make
movies, buy cards, flowers, and edible underwear, all in the name of love.
And yet we all end up bitter and unhappy, divorced and rejected anyway. Need
I say more?

9. Exercise. Rodney Dangerfield summed it up: If you take really good care
of yourself from now on, you're just going to get really sick and die. How
much time is wasted running around cages and working machinery, all in the
name of washboard abs and low body fat. Chances are I will outlive you all
by smoking Lucky Strikes and drinking cheap booze. The number of years added
to your life by effective exercise is probably equaled by the number of
years (collectively) you spend exercising. Ironic, huh? Also not worth it,
since those extra years are probably spent in the SunnyVale Old Folks Home,
drooling and wondering when you're finally going to kick off and find the
release from pain that only death can bring.

10. Weddings. I'm not talking about the institution of marriage; that is
another article entirely. I'm talking about the actual ceremony, the I-Dos
and the reception that we all have to slog through several times a year.
Talk about time slowing down to a point of meaninglessness, try watching
your fat relatives do the chicken dance. Your sanity becomes questionable by
the time they do the hokey-pokey, and by the time the band is packing up you
never know what year itll be when you step outside. They waste that much of
your time. And for what? So you can watch the same events you saw a few
weeks before. Every wedding in the white catholic world I am trapped in is
exactly the same, from the bad dance music to the crummy food, the eccentric
relatives and the bitchy brides. Christ, if I have to listen to one more
lame Best-Man speech, delivered as if it were actually witty and memorable,
I will stick my salad fork in my eyes. I swear I will do this. And why? Why
do we relive the same ceremony, from beginning to end, over and over again?
Its like being stuck in that movie Groundhog Day, only without any laughs
and no end credits.

Now, if only we could avoid all of the above, wed have productive and happy
lives, right? Nope, sorry, but thats the problem: you end up wasting it all
anyway. I think I might be able to sum it all up in one gloriously
cantankerous and ridiculous statement: the biggest waste of time in the
Universe is very likely living.

But, you can minimize it, in little ways. Every moment you spend actually
paying attention is one more moment that will be crystal clear to you when
your life dribbles out of you like a collapse. Do something when standing in
lines and riding the bus, do four things at once at home, read Jeof Vita's
article on making the job work for you in this issue and apply some of his
lazy wisdom -fight the fucking ennui, kids. If you don't, you might as

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY ***

FUCK YOU, PAY ME!!!
(not just a motto, a way to live, work and play)
by Jeof Vita 
======================================== 

There is so little time in our lives to do everything that we want to do, be
with the people that we want to be with, and so on. I'm sure you're all
familiar with all those outrageous statistics that break down exactly how
much of our lives are wasted doing meaningless thingsstanding on line, going
to the bathroom, waiting for the bus, stuck in traffic, etc. Ridiculous
numbers that add up to years taken away and can never be recovered.

Now for those of you who don't mind that grind, you justify it by some clever
spin-doctoring and prattle on about that very situation making life so
precious. Every moment is a golden moment and you must live each one to it's
fullest. That's great if that's what you really believe. But in the meantime,
you wake up at 6:00 AM, travel an hour and a half to work, churn out
information that you don't care about, leave work at 5:00 PM, travel another
hour and a half home, sit down with Mrs. Swansons, challenge Alex Trebek to
another round then hunker down and watch TV for three hours, and then it's
off to bed to do it again tomorrow. Very healthy.

The largest portion of that schedule is of course, the job. There are a very
few of us out there that actually love the job that were doing. But for the
rest of you people, you do what you do to get by, sucking up to the boss of
the moment and being content with getting caught in a rut and settling for
it.

Here then is the challenge...instead of caving in to the demands of the job
and allowing it to crush your spirits, turn it around and make it your time
to do with what you will, and yet, still maintain the veneer of doing what
it is you get paid for. The other option is just quit your job altogether,
hop into your microbus and spread your own unique brand of free-love to the
four corners of the world. Take a minute to decide.

For those of you who choose to try and cheat the system, welcome back. Now,
before we delve into this hare-brained scheme, let me tell you about my
typical workday. I am an Editor at a comic book company, that is in turn
owned by a video game company, so right off the bat, you might not think
that making funny books and video games requires all that much skill or
knowledge. (1) I would have been inclined to agree with you early on in
life, which is why I went after this job, but from experience, the grind is
all the same.

I typically get to work at about 10:30 AM, thirty minutes after the day is
supposed to start. Normally, I take a half-hour or so to survey the days
agenda, find out who I have to avoid, which items I can push off, and who I
can blame for mistakes from yesterday. At about 11:00, it's time to leave the
desk to catch up with my co-workers activities of the previous night. That
usually kills a good half-hour, at which point I must make sure that the
people in power know that I am indeed doing something productive. So I
parade around all the designated work areas, groan at some imaginary task
not being done, and then it's back to my co-workers to talk about plans for
lunch. Come 12:30, it's lunch time, and work still has to get done somewhere.
Lunch usually lasts about an hour and a half, two if you know what you're
doing after which, it's time to actually do something productive. By now, it's
2:00 PM and phone calls have piled up and paperwork has collected. INTERNS!
Cool, another problem out of the way. So then it's back to hanging with the
coworkers, giving out backrubs to the female employees, etc. (2) Now it's
3:00 and it's almost time to go home, so once again I try to settle in and
get some work done. By this time, the job synapses have started to fire and
I do my best to condense an eight hour day into the following hour. I fail
miserably and give up at 4:00. Then it's time to get a snack from downstairs.
I rally a few friends and we all head down to pick up drinks, ice cream,
chips, etc. and in the process, kill a half-hour. Well, it's 4:30 and the
office has begun to thin out, making it much easier to get away with
hijinks. So, some more milling around, actually asking pertinent questions
about work, getting schedules together, planning all the tasks that will be
avoided come the next day. Then, it's off to the clearing in the middle of
the office for an impromptu paperball game. My my, look at the time, it's
5:30 and most of the heads-of-state are gone, so it's time to shutdown and
call it a day. So you see, I waste my share of time, but it's not my time
that I'm wasting. In the typical workday, I have completed a shopping list,
saw a great movie, planned a weekend, and went three for three in paperball.

Any one of you can do it too. Try a few of these things and see if it doesn't
help you at least enjoy your workday a little bit more. And if this mission
is compromised in any way, I will disavow all knowledge of you and your
activities. (3)

THE ART OF WASTING TIME

Arrival at work: This is the key time to set everything up that you actually
want to accomplish during your day. Take that first half hour to check your
agenda and make sure that there is nothing that, if not done, will get you
fired. If that's all clear, bring out everything else that you want to do.
Break out that shopping list that you have to prepare, open up that letter
to Mom that you have to finish, pull up that script that you're still working
on, whatever.

Heres the trick...pore over it like it is the be all and end all of the
companys existence. Make sure that there are official documents nearby to
disguise the truth. Concentrate intently on the info that you are reading.
Knit your brows and rub your head from time to time to convey that if you
don't pick the right cream cheese, the entire entertainment industry will
collapse.

If you catch a boss heading in your direction, be prepared to switch
documents, but do not panic. This is important: do not acknowledge the boss
first. In fact, let em have to get your attention. If they have to call out
your name, they assume that you're working and working hard. (4) Then,
before they have a chance to say anything, point out a bit of work-related
info that they may or may not know. It doesn't matter if the info is old
news. Repeat a memo that was circulated that morning, comment on how the
client-of-the-day has not yet returned your call, etc. It just shows that
you have your ear to the ground and they think that you actually care.

Catch-up time: This may be easy to do, but it is hard to do consistently
without getting yelled at. First off, never walk around the office without
documents in your hand. A fistful of paper is worth it's weight in gold in
terms of presenting the proper business attitude. Now, before you go off to
chit-chat, make sure to walk past the boss office, papers in hand, and visit
those work areas. No time to be cavalier about your task...theres serious
time to waste. The aforementioned work areas include the fax machines, the
copiers, the paper closet, anything that has an official capacity.

When you walk past your boss office, grumble and grumble loudly about some
job that is not getting done becasue of someone elses incompetency. Make
tracks to the fax machine for a fax that you know will never come, and
complain out loud, Jesus! When the hell is this friggin fax gonna come
through! Ive been waiting a half-hour! Rustle the papers, slap them against
your head, and a casual slap on the machine or two never hurts. Inevitably,
someone pops their head out of their door to say hello and ask if
everythings OK. Keep it in stride, be cheerful, but make sure that your face
conveys that you are emotionally wrecked that you are the only one doing
your job in this damned universe! The curious onlooker will mentally note
that 1) you have been here for the last half-hour and 2) you are a
dedicated, hard-working individual who will go places. (5) But you know
better.

Some other useful and believable complaints:

The useful 'Dammit, the copier is out of toner!'

To which, an intern will scurry to your side, pull out the toner cartridge,
shake it back and forth a few times, replace it, and then make your copies
for you. Easily 10 minutes killed right there, PLUS you have more documents
in hand.

The ever-popular 'Where the hell is all the copier paper?'

To which an intern will scurry to your side, grab the stack of paper that
was about 4 inches from your face, open the ream, and load up whatever you
falsely needed it for.

And, of course, 'The fax is jammed again!'

To which an intern will scurry to your side, pull out the paper cartridge
(which you loosened slightly prior to your voiced complaint so as to
simulate the jamming of the machine) check the fax path, declare it clear,
and then make your fax for you.

Lunch time: My favorite part of the day is lunch time. Most of you have one
hour lunches, but like I said, if you play it right, that can easily be
stretched out to two hours. To start, go out and pick up lunch and bring it
back to work with you. Now, I realize that most people want to get out of
the office for a while, but that's why they have only one hour to eat. (6)
Sacrifices do have to be made. Anyway, bring lunch back and actually eat it
at your desk. You don't have to do any work, you can read the paper, listen
to tunes, or what have you, but as long as you're at your desk, no one really
counts it as lunch because you remain accessible should anyone need you. The
thing is, no one ever needs you because in their mind, they register that
you're eating. At best, it is a working lunch. The actual eating takes about
10 minutes, so now what do you do? Well, scan the room and look for
colleagues who are congregating to have their lunches. Insinuate yourself
into that group and voila, a whole new hour for you to do with as you will.

For me, getting lunch usually takes twenty minutes, after which I eat for
ten at my desk. The rest of the crew arrives shortly after with a movie to
watch during break so I casually join in and now I have a new hour to kill.
When movies are brought in, an extra half-hour is usually excused and I am
much more well rested for the remainder of the day. Two hours of vegetation
will do that to you.

Post lunch time: After lunch has digested, and you're energized for the rest
of your sentence, then you might have to actually do a little bit of work.
However, if you have been paying attention, there is always that one magic
word that can take care of a lot of things for you: interns. Choose 'em, use
'em, and refuse 'em...they love it because it validates their small little
lives and you love it because it validates your authority and you shrug off
yet another list of meaningless tasks. Copies have to get made? Interns.
Letters have to be written? Interns. Budget has to be balanced? Interns. God
bless every one of em.

One more way to occupy the post lunch time hours is to have a meeting. Hold
a meeting yourself, or gently persuade the head honchos that you notice that
something hasn't been addressed, and youd like to get everyones input on the
subject. Getting the boss to call one is slightly more effective because of
course, it's a power trip for big cheese to be asked for advice, and be given
the opportunity to solve the problems of the little people. Once in the
meeting, stall in every way possible. Be that kid in school who never let
wnyone leave class without reminding the teacher that homework had not been
assigned. Always ask colleagues to elaborate on their answers even if it is
crystal clear to you the first three times they answer. People love to hear
themselves talk, and what a great way to whittle down the hours. (7)

Days end: Well, the day is coming to a close and you've done minimal work. So
what's left? Prepare everything so that you can do it all again the next day.
Make sure you've delegated everything that can be delegated out. Make sure
that nothing that can incriminate you exists in any tangible form. Above
all, make sure that you always look like you've had a tremendously hard day
at work and are really looking forward to getting home and hitting the sack.
Bosses love tired employees. 

The above are just a few of the ways to make the workday fly by. Of course,
it will take some practice and a silver tongue, but if you stick with it,
you too can adopt the fuck you, pay me attitude that has served me so well.
However, if you get caught in your shenanigans and get fired, then it is
your own fault because you are a loser.

As for me, it is time for me to bid you adieu, because I am, after all, at
work, and I'm due up at bat. 

n.b. To officers of Acclaim Entertainment, Acclaim Comics, and any of it's
subsidiaries: The preceeding has been a fictional work and does not in any
way encapsulate the dedication, effort and work ethic that Jeof Vita
utilizes in his workplace.

The INCREDIBLY INSULTING EDITOR'S NOTES: (1) Actually, I imagine it takes a
lot of skill and knowledge, I just might not think Mr. Vita would possess
either of those attributes. (2) Mr. Vita has already told us that he works
at a comic book company, which means that logically, there are no female
employees. (3) Coward. (4) Or that you are incredibly dense. (5) Or that you
have Tourette's Syndrome. (6) It's also why they have something Mr. Vita is
obviously not burdened with: friends. (7) People also like to see their name

======================================== 
*** FICTION ***

The Happy Bastard
by Jeff Somers       
========================================

The party was a little too polite to be much fun; it was an hour away from
drunk enough and three away from raucous. There was just enough booze for
the twenty or thirty guests, however, so hope sprang eternal in the thick
spring heat, right after the rain. The doors to the house were opened
encouragingly, but no one dared test the garden or the yard and drag mud
into the museum-like house, at least not while the hostess remained sober.
But, with the comforting weight of enough booze settling easily into the
air, the conversation and the light thoughts of the guests, hope sprang
eternal on that end as well. No party had turned raucous which had not at
one point been an hour away from drunk enough.

The house had all the charm and comfort of a dollar-bill; people moved
through it carefully, afraid of incurring cleaning bills and police reports.
Some guests, once the heady gaze of the just-enough booze settled upon them,
would hallucinate the velvet ropes of exhibition around particularly
wonderful groups of grazing furniture. It was the sort of grim home wherein
none of the chairs were actually meant to be sat in, nor any of the tables
meant to support objects, the sort of house that easily caused visitors to
imagine the owners renting an apartment nearby in order to avoid sleeping,
breathing, or eating within its chaste walls. It was the sort of house which
imagined upright, polite vermin, if it imagined them at all.

Seated in a high-backed chair, Sherman Mosely ashed a cigarette onto the
carpet.

He was a disagreeably handsome young man, with pale skin and dark edges:
hair, eyes, mouth. The muffled party noise felt distant and indistinct,
drifting carelessly on the gay and light strains of inoffensive music. Down
the hall were the ornate and paranoidly clean bathrooms, and Shermans eyes
kept straining in that direction.

Someone entered the room, and Sherman scowled at him, smoking bitterly.

"Hey Sherman," the newcomer said in a stretched-out sing-song punctuated by a
girlish giggle.

Sherman studied him for a moment, offered another glance at the bathrooms,
and exhaled smoke. "Hey, Ned," he replied in a laconic drawl. "What the fuck
brings you away from the free food?"

"Well," Ned sang, "just thought Id explore this great house. Just great." He sat
down next to Sherman and giggled again. "What about you?"

"Me?" Sherman replied. "I'm going to try and shag Barbara when she gets out of
the bathroom, assuming you're not here to ruin everything."

Ned laughed. It seemed nervous, but it wasn't. "Isn't that against the law or
something?"

Sherman stared at him. "Shes my sister-in-law, not my sister." He dropped the
cigarette onto the carpet and crushed it beneath his shoe. "Ned, go away."

Ned Ryerson was a tall, thin man with unfortunate facial hair that managed
to always look unruly. It was dark and greasy and slightly curled and he
never seemed to shave often enough. Sherman considered him annoying and
unduly concerned with free lunch, but basically harmless. As he sat waiting
for his sister-in-law, staring at Ned, Sherman felt capable of striking him.

Ned, operating on some secret sense that had kept him out of fights so far,
got up and walked away. Sherman immediately turned away to face the
bathrooms.     

In the living room, the conversation was hushed, the guests afraid that
strong air currents might disturb the careful color scheme and fabric
choices. It was the sort of room which inspired quiet, the sort of room
which usually brought up visions of old men smoking cigars, drinking brandy.
In its heavy wallpapered atmosphere the young men and women stood
uncomfortably and tried desperately to inject the occasion with the zaniness
of youth without stooping to raising their voices. It was early yet; they
ate finger-food eagerly and drank carefully, with the balance slowly
shifting between the two.

Ned Ryerson regarded the open bar with apathy and the buffet table with awe,
his hands twitched with the subconscious desire to stuff his pockets. The
invitation had asked for jacket and tie, so Ned wore the single examples of
each that he owned. The jacket was tan and courderoy, the tie was red and
silk, and each hung off of him with a slack ease that made him appear
malformed and small. He created a plate of tiny sadnwiches and walked over
to a pale redhead, who stood momentarily alone.

Hey, Mo, whats up? he said.

She smiled, the quick, automatic smile of the naturally polite, which normal
people recognized for what it was: tolerance. Ned Ryerson, separate somehow
from normalcy, did not see it that way.

"Hi, Ned, Having fun?" she asked.

"This is great." he nodded, his eyes finding themselves on her chest.
Startled at such temerity, he munched snacks and looked around.

Maureen was a tall girl with open eyes that invited ungallant behavior. She
laughed easily and often seemed uncomfortable in her clothes, as if they
were binding.

She found herself standing next to Ned and did not know why. The night had
suddenly taken on bizarre tones and unexpected nuances, so she finished her
drink and handed it to Ned.

"Get me another gin and tonic?"

Ned, unused to traditional male roles, stared dumbly for a moment. He spared
a saddened glance at his unfinished plate and then back to her chest, where
his eyes remained for an unfortunate amount of time. Finally he nodded, and
handed her his plate, which she stared at while he grabbed her glass from
her.

"Sure." he said, turning quickly and almost stumbling, which caused a hushed
moment of tension in the room- my god, the carpets! -which quickly eased
into amused relief.

At the bar, Ned engaged the bartender in a long discussion of the evils of
alcohol, which he personally never touched (a fact he repeated several
times) except on very special occasions of which this party was not one. The
bartender, not making very much in tips and by profession distrustful of
teetotallers, spoke less and less as the talk went on and the air
surrounding the bar grew bitter and cold, spreading across the party in
increments of clinking glass.

When he returned, his plate was carefully balanced on a ceramic planter, and
Maureen was gone.

Sherman watched Barbara with the sharp eyes of the greatly concerned,
studying and measuring her mood, inebriation, and reaction. He found all
three to be just as he'd hoped.

Barbara Griffith-Mosely was a solid young woman with strawberry hair and
effective curves. She appeared to be simultaneously older and younger than
her twenty-five years: her green eyes were aged and calm and regarded
everything with careless disdain, reducing it all to distraction, but her
mannerisms were young; she drank soda by leaning forward to the straw, she
giggled instead of laughing.

From the moment Sherman had decided to be a bastard, he'd wanted her.

She smiled as he watched her approach, and ran a ahand through her hair,
circling him playfully.

"Shermie, Shermie, Shermie  -what the hell happened to you? Huh?" She asked
carelessly. "You used to be such a sweetie."

"Why, I still am, Barb." he protested, watching the movement of  her thighs
under her short skirt, "It's the world turned sour around me."

She laughed, thinking she wasn't nearly as drunk as he hoped she was. But
she was drunk, so she sat down in the chair across from him and tucked her
legs beneath her.

Sherman calculated seduction with crisp detail of math. He kept in mind
several quiet equations which contributed to an ongoing Surrender Ratio: the
location of his brother Noel (traced via his booming, wheezy laugh) the
distance of the party, bathroom traffic, her apparent level of inebriation,
and how many cigarettes he had left. He studied her face and considered the
best way to approach it.

Barbara studied him back, wondering. When she had met Sherman three years
earlier he'd been a happy-go-lucky kid out of college, funny and sort of
sweet and she'd liked him. The man in front of her was different. His humor
had soured into sarcasm, his sharp eyes, so attractive in his youth, were
darker, somehow, and mocking. He was solider, larger, more there, and she
did not like the more of him there was. She thought she knew why he was
stalking her through such an old wheezy house, when there was plenty of
booze and food and Maureen to spoil, and was about to say so when Noel
Mosely walked in.

Every party has its cop, and Noel Mosely usually fit the bill. Shorter than
his younger brother, but with a bigger belly, he was loud and unfunny and
kept his head. He smiled down at his wife and younger brother.

"The in-laws get acquainted." He boomed. "How sweet."

"Noel, play nice," Sherman said pleasantly behind an icy grin. "Barbara
might think we didn't like each other."

"Oh, lord." Barbara muttered.

"Whatever," Noel said agreeably. "Just don't get sick-drunk tonight. I don't
want to have to -"

"Neither would I, kiddo," Sherman said brightly, "aren't they calling for
you? Yes! I can hear them: Noel, come save us! If only everyone had some of
you in their lives! We'd all be okay!"

"C'mon, Barb," Noel said, tugging at his wife's arm.

"Go ahead, barb," Sherman said with a mean grin, "we'll pick this up later."

Noel spared a sharp glance at his brother, and then Barbara was up and
following him back to the party. Sherman watched her, lit a new cigarette,
and found his drink.

"Fuck."

Maureen O'Donnel drank nervously and smiled hugely when Barbara touched her
arm.

"You look nervous."

Maureen sighed. "Ned's stalking me."

Barbara rolled her eyes, started to speak, and then paused. When she
continued, she said "Ned's harmless."

"Maybe," Maureen said, rubbing her arm as if she were cold, "have you seen
Sherman? I've lost him."

Barbara opened her mouth and stood for a moment, silent. "I - I think he's
out in the other room, being mean to everyone going to the bathroom."

Maureen laughed unhappily. "Yeah, that's what he likes to do at parties,
these days."

This time Barbara didn't hesitate. "What happened to him?"

Neither did Maureen. "Sometimes I think I did."

The party edged carefully into flushed; the heat rose, and drinks became
more popular than the food. The buzz of conversation rose to fill the living
room and spill out, and secret groups of two or three found quieter places
to be, spare bedrooms where the careful furniture had dust on it, carpeted
hallways where, drunk, they sat on the floor, the kitchen, where, drunk,
they raided the larder and decided to drink domestic beer from the bottle
instead of their complex cocktails.

One young man, well dressed but unfamiliar, drank too many vodka Gimlets and
locked himself into the basement bathroom. A party of ten men in sweating
suits, all of them drinking scotch, gathered outside to deal with this
emergency, alternately attacking ther door. The rest of the guests merely
detoured to one of the other bathrooms.

In the main room, where the hostess sat on a couch holding a wine spritzer,
a vague look of unease on her face, Ned Ryerson ate from a new plate of
finger foods and held an earnest one-sided conversation concerning magazine
articles with an attractively bored brunette who suffered through it wishing
her date would reappear and save her, not knowing that he was locked in the
bathroom downstairs.

Noel Mosely, keeping an eye on things as party cops did, watched Ned in
action for a while and wondered about it. He couldn't tell if Ned was
hitting on the poor girl, or just speaking to anyone. After a few minutes he
lost interest and then realized he'd lost his wife again.

"Out here spreading pain and suffering again?"

Sherman grinned at Maureen around his drink. "Like a bad religion, baby. I
corrupt more innocents on a daily basis than drugs and pornography
combined."

She sat on the arm of his chair and played with his hair. "You left me alone
to be pawed at by Ned, you know."

Sherman scowled irritably. "Is that supposed to make me jealous? Ned
couldn't find his dick to piss."

She took her hand away. "Why not come join the party? I'm getting tired of
standing there by myself."

"No, honey, I'm tired of talking to idiots."

She swallowed, and hugged herself, and swallowed again. "Well," she said,
her voice small and reluctant. "I could stay here and keep you company." She
closed her eyes.

Sherman barked a laugh, something breaking in his chest to produce such a
noise. "No, honey," he said shakily, too loud, "I'm tired of talking to
idiots."

She stood, and turned, and walked away. Sherman lit a cigarette.

When someone broke the basement bathroom's door down and dragged the
unconscious fellow from it without a shred of restraint or dignity, it was
obviously time to go, and people began to slip away to avoid being asked to
leave. The fellow's date had left long before in hurt disgust, so he snored
on the floor of the basement while the host and hostess attempted to figure
out what to do with him. Finally he was placed in the care of Ned, who had
found his ideal audience and immediately began to talk.

People were being discovered in all sorts of places, holed up in private
away from a party that had disintergrated in the meantime. The Host, three
sheets to the wind himself, began clearing everyone out methodically from
room to room: the lovers caught in passionate kisses, the lonely drunks
weeping softly to themselves, the buddies lost in quiet, amnly conversation.
One by one they were ousted.

There was then, of course, some confusion with the coats. Noel helped sort
things out, along with the hostess, who appreciated his help but hoped he
wasn't planning on staying late for coffee as his reward. When everyone had
been sorted out (not without some harsh words and brandished fists) and
there were still a few coats left, Noel led an expedition to the upstairs
spare room, normally ignored by guests, where they found Maureen, crying
quietly.

Sherman watched Barbara as she carefully made her way towards him and sank
into a chair opposite him, her hair obscuring her face partly as she stared
at him. He stared back, smoking.

"Shermie," she said comfotably, "have you been sitting out here all night?"

He nodded, studying her. "Yes."

She stood and stepped up close to him, putting her hands on the chair's arms
and leaning over him, weaving slightly. Their faces were very close and he
resisted an urge to glance down her blouse.

"Shermie," she said again, soft and slow, "what happened to you?"

Slowly, he leaned in and let his lips touch hers, and she closed her eyes
and let him, and after a moment she parted hers slightly, letting out a long
sigh. For a few seconds they were like that, only their heads and mouths
moving, and then her reached up and lightly touched her waist, getting ready
to pull her towards him.

She pulled away and walked off a few feet, her arms hugging herslef.

"What's wrong," he wanted to know, his voice was level and harsh. "Barbara,
what's wrong?"

She offered him a little nervous laugh. "I can't do that. For   -for some
crazy reason up until you. . .touched me, w-with your hand, it was just a
joke. But, I can't do this."

"Can't do this." Sherman said, and he grinned. "Sure you can. You mean you
won't."

Barbara sniffled. "Yes. Yes, of course that's what I mean."

His eyes slid to the floor and he appeared to concentrate on his cigarette.
Silence stretched out between them, until she turned to regard him.

"Sherman?"

He snorted, and continued to smoke as if it took all of his concentration.
Barbara watched him for another few moments, and then very slowly walked out
of the room. A moment later, he began to laugh, and that was how they found
him, some time later.

======================================== 
*** FICTION ***

"A Winter Storm Warning is in Effect..." 
By Lauren Strutzel
========================================

What the hell was she doing leaving the bar alone? She had met Art weeks
before, and she was surprised at running into him again. It was packed in
that tunnel of a place, and so noisy you couldn't hear the jukebox blaring.
The windows were covered in steam; condensation of the words men and women
threw at each other as bait. She pushed through, jamming her elbows into the
sides of the software designer, placing her cold palm on the back of the
stock broker, mouthing excuse me in her little girl voice, feeling her shoes
get sucked by the beer soaked runner carpet near the front door. Just as she
reached Art a blast of frozen air hit her back and sent quakes down her
spine. He smiled at her, surprised that she too would be out on a night like
this. "Didn't you watch the news, theres a storm warning in effect. You could
get snowed in tonight if you dont get out in time."

She pinched a slight smile and ignored the draft circulating around him. She
had remembered how sly hed been before and she wondered if the draft was a
reminder of the impending storm or if Art himself were emitting icy
coldness. But if she wasn't sure about the cause of the cold which was barely
keeping her alert, she was certain of one thing. Art exuded a charm that was
unstoppable, she had been it's target before, only then shed been sober. Art's
roommate came sliding in on her side just as she opened her mouth to ask Art
where hed been the past few weeks. His roommate also smiled at her in that
same coy, innocuous way Art had just presented minutes before. Before Abby
could pull away from his smile, she heard Art speaking to her and felt his
breath as he leaned into the side of her neck. He suggested they leave, and
after she settled some suspision within herself, she thought shed go along
with them. The crowds were bothering her, she was finished with the drink in
her hand, and she was feeling bemused. Maybe it was that she had been there
for a couple of hours, maybe it was that it was near one in the morning and
she was just tired, or maybe, it was an enchantment of sorts. Nonetheless,
she had been through the bar routine before, and she remembered how shallow
it all was. She thought she shouldn't get involved with Art, but she did get
involved with him, for a short while, until the proposal that came later on.
Art's roommate lifted the bottle from her hand just as Art spun her around
and into her coat. The three of them stepped through the door and out into
the pre-storm night. She walked with Art and his roommate in the freezing
city air. It was a cold that bites you through your clothes, a cold keeping
everyone so covered and layered that even the aerobic instructors looked
roly poly; so layered that all those young, strutting males looked nothing
like the lanky cynical alcoholic 25-year-olds they really were underneath.
They walked until they reached a corner deli. She didn't remember stopping.
Didn't remember going into the deli. Just remember feeling dizzy as if she
were under water, but speaking and walking all the same, just below the
surface of it all. Floating, but with ten pounds of clothes on. Buoyant
even, although wearing fleece long johns, thermal tube socks, a t-shirt,
henley, flannel cardigan, and then her skijacket. Her teeth chattering but
not visible from behind the yarn scarf, her gortex boots peering out from
under her overalls, and her waterproof gloves still tucked into her sleeves.
Lifting from the ground with all that shit she was wearing, trying to laugh
and feel sexy talking to Art and his roommate.

She still didn't remember stopping, even as their sneering smiles ducked
behind their collars pulled up straight, covering their necks. She could see
them whispering behind the glass door as they each reached for a Snapple;
she could see them winking and nodding, blinking and smirking. She did not
know that they were performing for her, but behind that, they were arranging
the night, like two bookies on a bet. She could see them until the glass
became frosted over and she urged them to choose a drink so they could get
out of there. She wondered why they were so thirsty, how they could want a
cold drink, while they were walking in the cold outside. Art's roommate
grabbed a Devil Dog, tore open the package and bit it in half. Art made
furtive gestures at the cashier, the cashier handed something to him under
his palm and Art handed him some cash, all the while smiling at her, while
all the while she was floating further and further away from him, closer to
the door. Art's coat sleeve caught the item he had just bought and it fell
off the counter and opened like a billfold. He scooped it off the floor,
shoved it into his jeans and laughed a little.

Tripping over a pile of Sunday inserts that were lying on the floor ready to
be filed in their section of the paper, Abby kept her eye on the guys as
they were coming toward her. Art threw an arm over her shoulder and pushed
her out the door, "Onward," he called and the three of them were washed back
out into the invisible stream of cold. A cold  - angled, rough, attacking
the flesh, non descriminant- caught her attention just for the moment. She
wondered if it was cautioning her against going outside. That was ridiculous
though, she couldn't stand in the deli all night. She relaxed a bit and
listened to Art's teeth rattling as he spoke to her, his proposition. Again,
for the second time that night she could feel his hot breath on her neck.
She swam to the top and ermeged like a child held under water and out of
breath. The night was so cold anymore, and for an instant she seemed naked
standing in front of them.

She didn't remember walking that far from the bar, but she remembered now
what street they were about to cross. The boys took their cues from her slow
stop and fumbled for a lighter in the dark. Empty garbage cans were
scattered along the sidewalk and she could finally smell the foulness and
the decay that was lying around them. She wasted time searching the street,
searching for something to say, something smart. She wasn't floating so much
anymore, and she could see their wide smiles gleeming in the voided air; air
erased by the darkness that rushed in like smoke suddenly and filled all the
cracks and crevices. The spaces in between the other drunks teetering home
around them.

They urged her to continue, back to their place. "Where it's warm and then we
can sit and talk." She heard Art's roommate curse at the winter that was
ruining his lips and nose and fingertips. She stared at the two boys smoking
and fidgeting in front of her, dancing in circles like someone at a club
dancing around in a frenzy to avoid desperate partners. They were like rat
prairie dogs assessing and devouring with their eyes and their schemes.
Luring with their assurance that they were all just going up for more smokes
and that it was "Really too fucking cold to stop and talk here on the
corner."

Suddenly she was awake, like when you sit up and breathe deep coming out of
anesthesia. You stop shivering under all those layers, and the nurse is
yelling into your face to "Wake up now, OK. . .Abby, you're awake. . .take
deep breaths and get it all out of your system." And she did take deep
breaths and she did let it out of her system, and she shook, and she cursed
them, and she teared up. Suddenly she stopped shivering from the cold. She
raced home and peeled off those layers and lit a cigarette and drew it in
deep like the fresh breath the nurse had demanded she take that morning
after anesthesia. She wondered if they had made any effort to stop her or
follow her, she was still groggy from the drinks, but the audacity of the
proposal was sobering. She remembered straying through the cold, remembered
the package at the deli, remembered the smiles that should have given them
away to her, remembered the draft at the bar near the door. She stood, bent
over the railing in her apartment, wearing only a t-shirt and socks, smoking
deep and holding it long, and when she exhaled, after she had warmed her toes, she woke from floating, and cried.

======================================== 
*** DITHERING ***

Eat Your Food and Steal Your Wives
Buy Us Beer and We're Friends for Life
By Jeff Somers
========================================

Friendship is a rough gig, don't you think? It is the hardest arrangement
two people can enter into, bar none. Romance? Easy. Marriage? Simple.
Friendship can break your heart, ruin your life, bankrupt your bank account,
sour your view of the future, and take away your inspiration and stability,
all before lunch. And even after all that, it goes on, and that is what
makes it such a lovely and boisterously grandiose institution. This leads us
to the Inner Swine rule of life #151: "Lovers and spouses will come and go,
but good friends are forever."

The thing about friendship is that it is so voluntary. You might say that
all relationships are voluntary, but we here at The Inner Swine Institute of
Cynicsm counter that all relationships have voluntary aspects. I mean, if
you're married it's not just a voluntary commitment and affection that keeps
you together, it's also the legally binding contract you have with your
spouse, not to mention the sheer hassle and draining effort of divorce,
custody, and lawyer fees. Lovers have no legal ramifications to keep them
together, true, but many couples will admit to having all sorts of other
pressures: a shared lease, ownership of material goods, the complicated
intertwining of too already complex lives. Not to mention the societal glue
that sets in when all your friends, family, and associates get involved with
"Why did you kids break up? You were so good together!" (shudder).

And your family? Talk about people who can never shed you from their
tortured lives without serious consequences. You may not ever speak to or
care about your sister again, but she will always be your sister.

The point, then, is that your friends don't have these kinds of bonds
holding them to you. They are 100% voluntary creatures. Every day they wake
up they can choose to never see you again, not speak to you, not return
phone calls. Yet, for some reason, they do. Not only do they tolerate you,
but they actively seek out your sick, twisted existence that is undoubtedly
more trouble than it is worth. In this day and age, The Inner Swine
considers that to be a miracle, of sorts.

Since we here at The Inner Swine view a good friendship as the only thing in
life you can count on to any extent (admitting, of course, to the vagaries
and unforseen neurosis of our fellow shaved apes), we have of course
developed a complex list of rules for friendship, a way to tell if your
friendship is a great one or simply a run-of-the-mill friendship of
convenience.

(Why we love lists so much here at The Inner Swine isn't an easy question.
We certainly print a lot of them. I'd like to say that we do this in an
ongoing and noble attempt to bring a small level of organization and sense
to an insane world, a way of bringing disparate views together into a
codified list for the easy transmittal of concepts to easily confused
readers (a la' the 10 Commandments). But that, of course, would be a lie. We
love lists because they're (a) easy to write, (b) take up a lot of space and
(c) grant the illusion that we have some sort of grand wisdom to hand down
to our dimwitted followers (a la' the 10 Commandments). These articles
virtually write themselves!

But anyway. Perhaps I digress. There are ten easy ways to tell if your
friend is someone you can count on forever. Take each rule and ask yourself
if your friend fits the rule. If they do, you've got a keeper. If not,
you're doomed to an ongoing orgy of disappointment, betrayal, stolen
personal items, death threats, and stalking.

1. REAL FRIENDS DO NOT CONSIDER 3AM A BAD TIME TO RECEIVE A PHONE CALL, and
often have their longest and most intriguing conversations as the sun rises.
People whose first question upon receiving a 3AM phone call from a crowded
but closing bar is "Do you know what time it is?" sadly are not really your
friends.

2. REAL FRIENDS DON'T USE PHYSICAL ABUSE AS A TACTIC FOR GETTING THEIR WAY.
They use mental abuse, which is worse.

3. WHEN ALL YOU HAVE TO OFFER GUESTS IS PRUNE JUICE, REAL FRIENDS WILL
GLADLY ACCEPT AND PRETEND PRUNE JUICE IS A FORM OF LIQUID SEX. Faux friends
will volunteer to go out for beer. Do not be fooled by this seeming
generosity, if your friends can't suffer for you you can't waste your time
on it. I suggest the Prune Juice Test be utilized often and heartily.

4. REAL FRIENDS WILL NOT SLEEP WITH YOU NO MATTER (a) how drunk you both
are, (b) how often you try, and (c) how much you care about/flirt with each
other. This I know from bitter experience. I don't want to talk about it.

5. REAL FRIENDS WILL NOT CHANGE THE STATION ON YOUR CAR RADIO WHEN YOU'RE
DRIVING, unless you've given specific permission. A real friend will listen
to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Greatest Hits for hours without complaint.

6. REAL FRIENDS WILL SMOKE CIGARETTES WITH YOU LATE AT NIGHT WHEN YOU'RE
UPSET. Faux friends will cite lung cancer and suggest that you all get some
sleep.

7. REAL FRIENDS WILL GLADLY SHELL OUT A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF MONEY TO
PURCHASE A SUBSCRIPTION TO A ZINE YOU PUT OUT ALL BY YOURSELF. Faux friends
will gladly accept free copies as long as you're willing to give 'em. You
bunch of bastards, you know who you are, and I will have my revenge.

8. REAL FRIENDS WILL GET IN THE CAR WITH YOU NO MATTER WHAT A MANIAC YOU ARE
or how close you come to killing them every time. Faux friends call a cab
and smile nervously at your jokes about driving a "death-trap".

9. REAL FRIENDS DON'T CORRECT YOUR GRAMMAR. Grammar Nazis are not your
friends.

10. REAL FRIENDS REALIZE THAT THE MEANEST, NASTIEST ARGUMENT YOU GET INTO
WHEN DRUNK SHOULD BE FORGIVEN AND FORGOTTEN in the hungover light of day, no
matter what tears or blood were shed (right, Misty?). Faux friends never
call again, and somehow decide that your opinions on Fidel Castro impact
their ability to care about you as a friend.

Well, there you go, easy, step-by-step rules for the enjoyment of your
friends. If you can't think of a situation between you and a real friend
which coincides with any of these rules, create it. The only way to know,
for example, if your friends will drink Prune Juice, after all, is to serve
it up.

In the end though, since we here at The Inner Swine believe fervently that
everything fades, that nothing is forever, and that only the
felxible-by-definition relationship of friendship has any chance of
surviving the permutations and tragedies of life, you'll get your chance to
test each and every one of these against reality. And I guarentee you'll see
the wisdom of it. If not, you probably don't have any friends anyway, you
bitter, non-subscribing little harpy.

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY ***

Shes the Cheese and I'm the Macaroni: 
What the world would be like if life imitated Porno films. 
By Anonymous
========================================

Editor's note: this arrived in our email and provoked us sufficiently to
print it here. While I know who Anonymous is, nothing short of cold hard
cash will pry his name from my lips. Enjoy!

You watch enough pornography and you begin to question the fabric of
reality; this is the true teaching value of films such as Talk Dirty to Me
and Battle of the Squirts. After all, the shit has to stem from something in
real life, some aspect of society. You watch enough of these films and you
honestly begin to wonder if maybe there is a section of the country where
stuff like this happens, some sort of Bizarro society wherein the seventies
never died and sex is considered a fun way to bide some time: while waiting
on lines, while doing the housework, when on job interviews.

This naturally makes one start to wonder what would life be like if Bob
Horner were just a normal guy instead of a weird shadow-celebrity with a big
dick. Think about it: everything would be different:

1. Bell bottoms would never have gone out of style. All porno films seem
stuck in 1975. Everyone dresses in bad disco polyester nightmares, and
everyone is a swinger. The sets and fashions are so bad I actually do a
double-take when a modern appliance, such as a CD player, shows up.

2. Your living room could also be a disco, or a lawyers office, or just
about anything you wished. Only the very minimum work is done to make the
"sets" look like what they're supposed to be.

3. No one, not even Ron Jeremy, would be too ugly to score. It's not like
any of these guys are Rock Hudson, after all, and yet they're all out there
getting laid like mad. Of course, if you look at the chicks they're getting
laid with, it all starts to make a creepy sort of sense.

4. No one would ever wear underwear. After all, it would just get in the
way.

5. No one would do drugs, because they were too busy having sex all the
time. The weird thing about the porn industry is despite its sleaze-factor,
and the fact that very many of its stars are on serious drugs, there is very
very little drug use in the films themselves. Love is the drug they're
thinking of, baby.

6. All the women would have breast implants, and all the men would have
serious beer guts, and this would have no impact on their respective sex
lives. Seeing so many surgery scars jiggling up and down is an unappetizing
sight, most would agree, and seeing some of these simian yokels in all their
glory isn't very attractive either. And yet...

7. All music would be Muzak, with heavy emphasis on saxophones

8. Women everywhere would wear high heels no matter what activity they were
engaged in, and would never remove them, no matter what. These things must
be superglued to their feet. They apparently shower in them.

9. All women would be bisexual. The male libido is a mysterious thing.

10. Everyone would be white, unless interracial is your thing. If the title
doesn't allude to interracial romance, I challenge you to find a minority in
one of these films. They take the term "vanilla" to a whole new level.

======================================== 
*** NIHILISTIC PREENING ***

Meet the New Boss* 
Another New Years Rumination
By Jeff Somers
========================================

Every year man goes through a mini-midlife crisis, complete with hot
flashes, bloating, and falsely sentimental contemplation. We at The Inner
Swine have as one of our mottos join the herd or be trampled by the lowing
idiots, so we of course take this time to embrace this simple-minded navel
contemplation and write our newly traditional New Years article. It allows
us to assess our personal growth, put the past year into perspective, and,
most importantly, to fill up five or six pages in this rag with a lot of
rot.

I am more than a little disappointed with all of your personal growth this
past year. Beavis and Butthead are still being watched by someone out there,
someone keeps casting Sly Stallone in movies, and the fact that Homeboys
from Outer Space actually makes it onto the Nielsen charts just makes me
want to give up completely. I cannot, however; the voices in my head that
are my best excuse for a purpose refuse to let me rest until I have
conquered this uncaring world with the intense flames of my thoughts, or
something like that. You have to admit that it's a little disheartening to
see the crap that becomes popular out there, how our whole society is geared
towards wasting time and disparaging intellectual pursuits. If I had any
faith that the idiots we have in the government were anything but idiots,
I'd start wondering if this were all a big master plan hatched by Time
Warner and Nintendo.

On a personal level, my 1996 was filled with rejection, failure, blackouts,
minor success, and chaste women. Perhaps the best way to sum up my year is
this: it's July, and I am in Seattle with four people who, miraculously, I
loved dearly only five days before. I am sitting on a bench looking out over
Puget Sound and smoking a cigarette, and wondering if I could get away with
smothering them all in their beds at night and flying home alone, perhaps
claiming that they never got on the plane, that I wasn't going to let it
ruin my vacation so I went anyway, and that far from being worried about
their disappearance I greatly resented it, as it was obvious to me that they
were only pretending to be missing in order to ruin my life. I reject this
notion as impractical, but turn it over in my mind since it soothes me
greatly, even in the abstract. Ken sits next to me and makes a joke about
filming us for MTV's The Real World, and I briefly consider dumping him into
the water. I spent the morning watching environmental videos in Rob's
girlfriend's offices, which is not my idea of vacation, and my evening
witnessing how people who purport to be good friends can become consumed by
jealousy and unreasoning competition with each other. I flick my cigarette
away and take Ken's hand tenderly.

"I love you, man," I say warmly, "but if you say another word, I'll cut your
eyes out."

He nods and tears up, hugging me tight. We stay that way for a moment, and I
watch the sun continue to sink below the water.

"I understand." he replies tenderly.

"I warned you." I mutter, and hold him down, and as I am unfolding my
sharpened pen knife for the operation (the other tourists and my own friends
staring in horror) I think that I am the only man in America who could go on
vacation with three attractive single girls and not sleep with any of them.


Perhaps now you understand what my 1996 was like. Perhaps not. This has all
really only been filler, however, because what I really want to talk about
is The Most Disturbing Things About 1996. As the year went on I grew
increasingly alarmed at the direction things had taken, and now I can
chronicle the downward spiral of the year with wisdom and, most importantly,
impunity, since most of those involved are now, sadly, dead.

The Most Disturbing Things about 1996

1. My Bar Tab. I have always had a problem with math. In High School I spent
a great deal of time cheating on math tests, developing the now infamous
Somers/Einstein theory of Unethical Hat Brim Information Sharing (UHBRIS) in
order to pass basic mathemetical examinations and even then managed only a
passing grade. In my adulthood I have found this inability to manage numbers
to be a crippling lack, especially in my social life, where I often find
myself in the position of not being quite sure exactly how much money I owe
at restaurants and bars. A few weeks ago I had Ken sit down with me and
explain my bar tab to me, and to my horror I now calculate that I will have
to work nonstop for the next 63 years simply to cover the interest. If that
doesn't disturb you, man, nothing will.

2. The Presidential Race. Okay, all of you smug little voters bumbled down
to the polls last November and registered an opinion about a few things, the
effort probably exhausting you and leaving your brain in the same state as
my car battery after the lights have been left on. You poor, sad suckers.
Dole or Clinton, Clinton or Dole  -the same cloth, different patterns. While
my contempt for the 2 party system reached truly amazing heights this year,
more people than ever gave me the "if you don't vote don't complain" speech,
which has become the most idiotically vacuous statement anyone can make, in
my opinion. I don't vote, I do this out of a conviction and not out of
laziness, and not only will I complain, I will do so loudly and often. The
knuckle-draggers who believe that not voting makes you some sort of
irresponsible loser are right up there with the protruding-foreheads who
believe that simply voting, irregardless of your knowledge or involvement,
makes you a productive member of society. I don't care what you say: at
least half of the corn-fed american idiots who voted last year probably
shouldn't have, not having enough brain juice between them to light a single
bulb, and this bothers me, and apparantly only me. I don't propose that not
everyone should have the right  to vote, I propose that voting as an act is
meaningless unless you have worked to make it otherwise. Did you work? I
hope so. Me, I'm too lazy to work, so I wisely stayed away from the polls.
Instead of haranguing me with your smug little diatribes, you ought to thank
me for having the wisdom to keep my ignorance out of the booth.

2a. Strom Thurmond. This relic got elected again, kids. I swear I will never
cross the Mason Dixon line again; this guy makes you look at the movie
Deliverance as a documentary, all of a sudden.

3.  Kurt Cobain, Inc. While I am not one to enshrine dead celebrities in the
murky ichor of their image, this is a particularly disturbing entry in the
He's hot, He's sexy, He's dead school of money making. I think I've heard
more Nirvana songs on the radio these past few months than I did when they
were supposedly the voice of my generation (my generation on crack, sure).
Kurt wrote a few songs I dig, but if I have to hear one more screechy,
whining, badly produced, cutting-room-floor rejected period piece I may very
well blow my own head off, which I suppose would make you happy.

4. The Internet. Welcome to Corporate Hell. I don't fear child molesters or
Virus-terrorists. I fear the Disney Web site and the ignorant little
mongrels who want to treat the internet like they do everything else:
knowledge=evil. There are people out there (and I've met them) who wish
nothing more than to believe that everything you need to know is in the
bible, simply because they don't like to read, and this cuts their list down
to one.

5.  The Disney Takeover of Times Square. Maybe you're one of the millions
who paid money to see The Lion King or  The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Good
for you! Cling to that childhood as long as you can, wallow in your stuffed
animals and your boring sentiment. As long as it's on your time, I have
nothing to say (well, of course I do, but I certainly don't expect you to
listen to it). But when Mayor Guiliani sold Times Square to Eisner and
company, I felt a chill go down my spine. I have a mental image of stepping
off my bus in the morning and being greeted by a poor soul trapped in a
Goofy suit, handing out flyers:

Me: Whoa.

Goofy: Remember to visit the new Disney Wax museum! And the Mickey Mouse
Children's pavillion! Please, someone kill me! Put me out of my misery!

Me: Easy there, fella. How long you been in that suit?

Goofy: Two weeks! Please take some flyers! They said they'd break my
knuckles again if I didn't hand out 2000 by noon! And if you go to the gift
shop tell them Ernie sent you, and maybe they'll let me see my little girl
again!

Me: The gift shop? I think It'd be easier to kill you. Hold still now!

Goofy: Oh, thank sweet jesus. . .

Who knew I'd miss Runway 69, PeepWorld 2000, and the Show World Theatre (all
nude all night)? But I do. The shit was honest, it was natural, and it was
gloriously disgusting. Disney doesn't even let its employees grow beards.
It's going to take all I have to not bomb the place.

6. My co-workers. Increasingly, the people I share cubicle space with are a
surly, strange, bizarre group of people who apparently were regularly
interred in their linen closets as a form of punishment when they were kids.
Either the managers at my company have lost it to the point where they can't
tell the freaks from the rest of us losers, or there simply are no normal
people left bending the branches of the Tree of Life. I have never seen such
a collection of poor fashion sense, bad hygeine, ridiculous opinions offered
up out of nowhere, and people with no sense of personal space or boundaries.

I wonder if maybe this is some sort of reverse evolution, if perhaps a
literally regressive gene has erupted amongst us, causing freakish people to
appear where before there were none. Maybe, years from now, mean-spirited
smartasses who look good in a pair of tight jeans such as myself will be
beseiged by men with bad skin, short sleeve dress shirts, and unfortunate
facial hair demanding that  I acknowledge them. This frightens me, because
it means only one thing: the weirdos are winning.

7. The worldwide proliferation of Republicans. I don't think I really need
to expand on this, do I? Supporters of The Worldwide Proliferation of
Republicans can send letters of support and contributions to Cassie Moore,
care of The Inner Swine.

8. The "Grunge" Look.  Since when has the "unshowered look" been sexy? Since
when has the "so strung out on smack I drool ceaselessly look" been
attractive? Pretty soon we won't be able to tell the freaks from the rest of
us (see # 6) and then you have: anarchy. Chaos. Disco.  Used to be that you
could wake up one morning, not shave, not shower, put on some old khakis and
a torn up T-shirt and when you slouched down to the corner store for a pack
of cigarettes, holding a beer in a paper bag to drink on the way, everyone
who saw you knew you were in a really bad fucking mood and should not be
fucked with. Nowadays, that exact ensemble is being sashayed up and down the
runway in Bryant Park for 7 on Sixth.

9. Bad movies. An infinite number of monkies banging away at an infinite
number of typewriters couldn't possibly write worse shit than the
candy-colored crapola they're shoving down our throats. I could care less
about violence, nudity, or the glorification of drug use. I'm an intelligent
human being and I trust myself to make wise decisions in my life no matter
what Bruce Willis does onscreen. What bothers me is that Showgirls was
literally the worst piece of writing, acting, and choreography I have ever
witnessed. And while I may have been the only idiot to pay money for it, I
feel I am a better man for the experience. Now I know that no matter how bad
future epics turn out to be, I can still turn to Ken and say "Well, at least
we're not watching Showgirls."

10.  Phish.  Just when you thought Jerry Garcia's bloated, purpled, gaseous
carcass couldn't hurt you anymore. I wish all the potheads in this world
would stop acting like they're in on some spiritual secret, and start
realizing they're just potheads.

Another year gone, piglets, another twelve months of television watching,
beer drinking, burger eating, masturbation, frantic sex, vacuous flirtation,
endless repetition of endlessly repetitive tasks you are doomed to repeat
endlessly, bad stand-up comedy, lousy continental breakfasts, witheringly
boring meetings, commercials stared at mindlessly, imagined intimacies and
ruined plans. You can make resolutions if you wish; me, I'm just too fucking
tired.

Love,

Jeff Somers The Editor

*This is a quote from a song by a rock band called The Who. They were Pearl
Jam before Eddie Vedder had been conceived. Karen Accavallo can fill you in
on that period in muscial history, but trust us when we say that rock n
roll, far from being an element of change, repeats itself as much as any
other institution. Here is a quick list of how the old classic groups get
repackaged with younger parts and handed back to the scum-sucking idiots I
affectionately call my fellow consumers:

Old Band----------------->New Incarnation
--------------------------------------------------------------

The Who------------------>The Pearl Jam

The Descendents---------->The Offspring

The Beatles-------------->The Oasis

The Allmann Brothers----->The Black Crowes

The Jimi Hendrix--------->The Entire Grunge Movement

The Sex Pistols---------->The Green Day/The Rancid

Alice Cooper------------->Marilyn Manson

Bread-------------------->The Counting Crows


======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY ***

BIG DUMB ANIMALS  
roasting on spits, yum  
Omnivores, unite and lets kick some vegan ass
by Jeff Somers
========================================

I like to ask my vegetarian friends, both the gentle reasonable ones and the
feral, militaristic ones, what they would do if a spaceship were to land and
a race of intelligent Asparagus (Asparagi?) were to emerge and demand that
we free our vegetables. This isnt my idea (that, like most of the stuff in
this rag, was stolen from our friends in Too Much Joy), but I like to use it
as my own, because what you cant do yourself you steal, which is, as I
understand it, the accepted way of the world. The sputtering responses are
greatly amusing, because I am a pig who firmly does not believe in animal
rights. I am a pig who thinks everything on this green earth is edible, if
you use a little creativity; Id eat my Moms cat if I had to. I dont want to
(cats being very stringy and hard to catch, as a rule) but I would if I had
to. Hell, I would eat YOU, if I had to.

The concept of vegetarianism as a moral philosophy makes me feel like
throwing some punches around and making some of the pinko idiots in PETA
cry. If anyone out there thinks they can convince me that a freaking cow has
a reason to live to a ripe old age, please come forth and lets rumble, it
will, I think, be greatly amusing. A cow, for christs sake! Have you ever
looked into the eyes of a cow? You know what a cow is thinking as it sits
there chewing grass? Its thinking: mmmmm, grass over and over again. A cow
will never do anything but stand there and eat, piss, and fuck. It will
never do a goddammed thing more constructive than emit methane and low
plaintively, it will never create a damned thing and it will die as stupid
and useless as it was born. Unless we raise it up into the realm of the
useful, by slaughtering it, cooking it, and eating it.

I find it difficult, as a matter of fact, to even argue about this without
cracking a smile. After all, were arguing about a fucking cow.

Its easy, I think, to be a vegetarian in these fat times. Affluence allows
people to embrace all sorts of stupid concept and beliefs, for the simple
fact that weve got the time and energy to do so. Trust me when I say that
when getting SOMETHING to eat is your main priority, you dont dick around
with lightweight moral philosophies constructed out of a vague concept of
guilt and little else. I am a withered and yellowed young man with a whiskey
ulcer developing and nicotine stains on my fingers, the sort of guy who dies
young of hypertension, face down in a plate of steak tartar or something, so
perhaps I am biased, but doesnt it seem just a little impossible that cows
(or chickens, or pigs, or trout) were put here for any other reason? Show me
a cow who can write coherent sentences, chums, and I might embrace eggplant.


Of course, many of the vegan zombies will take that point of view and say
something along the lines of how vegetarianism is just a new level of
development for us. After all, were not just animals, and as we grow as a
race and learn new things, as we evolve into something better and rely more
and more on our reason instead of our brute tendencies, we put aside
instincts and choose to follow our minds. Hence, the decision to not eat
meat is maybe not natural, but it proves our intellect.

Balls.

Once again, the curse of the Star Trek universe rears its ugly head, wherein
were all supposed to show how advanced we are by how complex and
uncomfortable we make our lives in the service of being civilized. How I
hate Gene Roddenberry. I wish the bastard had never been born, to spew his
alls well in a Federation universe bullshit. The son of a bitch designs a
fantasy (note the use of the word fantasy) of a future where there is no
more strife over politcal correctness because the pencil necks have won, and
I hate him for polluting our world with it, because now we have entire
generations of people who feel confident that they will not have to fight
the good fight for much longer, because eventually there will be replicators
and we wont have to eat cows anymore. They fail to take into consideration
drooling neanderthals like me who dont have to eat cows, but who like to eat
cows.

I dont think vegetarianism is a sign of intellect. Neither do I think
rejecting vegetarianism is a sign of intellect, but then again thats never
been my argument, while the Vegans are pretty fond of it, sitting there
smugly eating something with tofu in it. As a matter of fact, I often think
that the more people who buy into a concept, the less intelligent it must
be. Look at Democracy, as a matter of fact: seventy million americans can be
wrong, and very often are. If there are a million Vegans in the world, kids,
I am just as likely to assume that there are a million morons as I am to
assume there are a million intelligent people making informed decisions. And
as I sit there licking the steak sauce off my fingers I definitely lean
towards the former.

Of course, lets not confuse the idiotic moral vegetarians with the more
reasonable if possibly misguided health-conscious vegetarians. Moral
vegetarians are the morons who think a cow has a purpose in life besides:
dinner. Health-conscious vegetarians are those of us who think they might
live forever, or at least a couple of more years, if they remove unhealthy
food from their diets. They are generally more reasonable and likable,
admitting that they would love a cheeseburger, but do not dare have one.
Unlike those of us who claim they cant bear the psychic pain of the cow.

After all, the sanctity of life thing is a dubious moral stance: if you
value life so much that you cant bear to eat a cow, why is the life
contained in, say, a tomato less important? I guarentee that the mental
energy generated by the cow is similar to that generated by the tomato. If
life is what you value, lets face it, buggers, you cant eat anything. Hell,
you shouldnt even be breathing, walking around, destroying whole ecosystems
every time you clean the apartment  -and right there, in that ridiculous
statement, is the whole problem: when do we stop putting less evolved
lifeforms ahead of us, and why should we in the first place? I didnt evolve
from a hairy ape into a slightly less hairy ape just to put the other apes
on a pedastle and work for them. Eat them, sure. If you value life so much
that you cant bear to eat it, then you have to examine every other aspect of
your life, or youre in danger of being a hypocrite. You cant use any product
that harms or kills critters, and this would include most medicines,
cosmetics, clothing, etc. You cant use any kind of motorized transportation,
watch TV, anything. You have to go to the library and find out who owns what
company, trace back the parent firms and make sure Exxon isnt the secret
owner of your cable station, or McDonalds the secret owner of your clothing
company. If you dont do that kind of back-breaking research, youre in danger
of harming life without even knowing it, which I guess is the worst way to
do it. I wouldnt know, not being overly concerned with the concept.     

There are too many people in this world who are, really, idiots with
opinions. Idiots dont necessarily bother me, the ones that know their place
and keep their mouths shut. They can be quite likable, actually, and amusing
in their own way. Its the loud, blustery idiots with an opinion that bother
me, the ones who have come up with one solid thought or landed squarely on
one solid bandwagon and cant shut up about it, these are the ones that
bother me. If everyone would just keep their traps shut, the world would be
a much more comfortable place, but no: there are those amongst us who must
always voice their opinion, as if their opinion matters to the rest of us.
Vegans will very often leap up to indict you when you order hamburgers, and
will spout endlessly hilarious pronouncements on your morality and
intelligence. These are the same people, after all, who smugly place false
advertisements in The New Yorker in order to embarrass fur-wearers.
Embarrass! As if they had anything to be embarrassed about. While I don't
like fur and don't wear it, while I might, under the influence of sentiment
and booze, admit that I don't much cotton to the notion of slaughtering
Thumper just to have a warm, expensive coat, I also laugh at the idea that
the people in PETA have any kind of ethical superiority. As a matter of
fact, Paul McCartney and his fellow intellectual frisbee-heads are probably
worse people than their supposed targets, simply because they have the
immense, evil audacity to suppose that they have the divine right of it, and
the rest of us are just a little too dim to get the concept.

I have news for them: I get the concept, I think they're wrong.
Understanding is not the issue, disagreement is. The fact that they consider
any one who disagrees with them to be morally inhibited and stupid is a very
Inner Swine concept. Unfortunately, so is not giving credit where credit is
due and maintaining an evil double-standard, so screw them.

The easiest way to deal with PETA-heads is to shove meat patties in their
faces, smearing them with psychic pain. As a matter of fact, we should all
take to walking around with White Castle hamburgers strung around our necks
like garlic, to ward off the Vegans. There is nothing, piglets, nothing, as
horrible as an idiot with an opinion. They are like gorillas with guns.

My suggestion is: eat meat and enjoy yourself, because cows dont have souls,
none of us do. If God had meant us to be vegetarians, he wouldnt have
invented gas grills. While I do not fault someone for choosing this
lifestyle for their own reasons, I fault them if they try to convince me of
it. I am tired of arguing all the time, and I think that if we all just keep
our opinions to ourselves and let everyone else deal with their guilts,
regrets, and health, wed all be happier. Of course, this article and
magazine dont count. You dont have to read this swill, do you? Go ahead, put
it down, I dare you.

======================================== 
*** FICTION ***

Cigarette Grins
by Jeff Somers
========================================

In a neighborhood bar on a thursday night: a little full but not crowded,
somewhere between the third and fourth round:

Bobby: "WELL, take Los Angeles, for example?"

Mark: "Why Los Angeles, why not New York?"

Bobby: "We live in New York.  Besides, for the purposes of this argument, LA
is a better example."

Mark: "Then the argument must not be a very good one."

Mary: "Oh, it's been a beaut so far."

Bobby: "Very funny, pretty girl.  Why not go get us a few more drinks if
you're not going to contribute to the intellectual quality of this
conversation?"

Mary: "I think I just did, but I'll get us another round if it It'll placate
you, Oh fearsome male."

Bobby: "Chief of the tribe, babe.  And don't you forget it."

Mark:  "Are you guys fighting?"

Bobby: "When are we not? Doesn't matter.  Forget her, she's just always in a
bad mood.  I don't know what I see in her."

Mark: "Yeah I guess.  Shes gorgeous, smart, thinks you're a genius and tie
only one of us who doesn't think you resemble a ferret.  I can see how it's
hard to stay with her."

Bobby: "Fuck you.  Okay? Can we get back to the discussion, or is this a
more interesting topic?"

Mark: "Your love life is a more interesting topic, especially to one such as
I who has had nothing resembling a love life for many, many months.  But we
digress.  What about LA?"

Bobby: "In the Bob Conklin paranoid theory of world domination, otherwise
known as the Bastards Among Us seminar, I can outline how an unscrupulous
President, armed with like-minded men and women in power across the country,
could turn the USA into a police state in a few weeks."

Mark: "Seig heil, Bobby.  Where do you come up with this shit?"

Bobby: "I read it in the Crazymans Digest.  I don't know, I think, you know,
think? Its what you used to do before we sat down for drinks tonight. 
Anyway, here it is: you remember the riots?"

Mark: "Riots?? What are these so-called riots you speak of?"

Bobby: "Fuck you again.  Okay, you cause riots to sprout in all the key
cities of the country more or less simultaneously: LA, Houston, New York
Chicago, Seattle -"

Mark: "Youre gonna cause a riot in Seattle, for christs sake? how? Are you
gonna take away their coffee?"

Bobby: "Third times a charm, fuck you.  It doesn't matter how, you just start
them.  Plant people to stir up trouble.  Call the cops out of the bad
neighborhoods, start rumors.  Its been done."

Mark: "Been done? What, is there a world domination course at The New
School, for crying out loud? Thank you dear, you must be an angel of
spirits."

Mary: "Gin and tonics all around, don't sweat it, theyre on me. I like
watching two sweaty men argue, so I thought Id get you drunk."

Bobby: "Too late.  Anyway."

Mark: "And take advantage of him?"

Mary: "No, you, precious.  Him I want to pass out."

Bobby: "Hey! Unhand her!"

Mark: "Come on, baby, let me take you away from the brute.  See how quickly
he's encouraged to violence? Look at the protruding forehead, the wild eyes:
he's a time bomb waiting to happen! Come away with me and I will keep you in
designer clothes and bon bons and I'll let you sleep with anyone you want."

Bobby: "Oh, lord."

Mary: "Sorry, Mark, he's spoiled me for other men."

Bobby: "Thank you, beautiful.

Mark: "How sad for you."

Mary:"Flattery will get you nowhere, you gorilla!"

Mark: "Sounds like no sex tonight for you, my friend."

Bobby: "ANYway, if I can ever finish -"

Mark:  "I understand if you don't want to discuss your lack of sex."

Mary:  "Ha!"

Bobby: "The sooner I get to finish my bizarre theory the sooner we can move
on to other topics."

Mary: "Hnmmmmmnnnnn. . .what do you think?"

Mark: "Id rather talk about sex."

Bobby: "Okay, so you get these riots started and naturally the mayors of
these cities declare a state of emergency and call in the national guard. 
All the citizens are happy for this, so no one complains, even after the
riots are suppressed and the guard still remains."

Mark: "Fascinating! Bravo, Bob, bravo.  Now about having sex with Mary,
would you describe it -ow! Christ, woman, watch those feet.  You nearly
unmanned me."

Mary: "I didn't think that were possible."

Mark: "Hmnph -because I'm so virile."

Bobby: "Ha!"

Mary: "So, thats what that smell is, the bitter reek of testosterone.  Youre
overflowing with it, I see that now."

Bobby: "Oh, hell, were not supposed to be having this much fun.  This is a
friggin funeral, after all."

Mary: "Wedding."

Mark: "Bobs right, Mare.  Well never see either of them again.  But it's not
yet, Bobby, not for another few weeks.  Cant we get all depressed then and
discuss rioting in America tonight? Or, perhaps, having sex with Mary."

Mary: "Why not having sex with Bobby?"

Mark: "Sorry, but the sight of Bobs ugly hairy butt -"

Bobby: "Oh, Jesus. . ."

Mark: "- makes me physically ill.  Your butt, on the other - "

Bobby: "Mark I swear -"

Mary: "Whew! Testosterone!"

Mark: "Certainly is flying everywhere. . .It really bothers you, doesn't it,
Bob? Nancy and Mort?"

Bobby: "Why do you say that?"

Mary: "Perhaps, sweetie, it's the funeral lingo you use to converse about it,
the way you get drunk and go on and on about how terrible a thing it is, the
way the phrase "a fucking disaster" creeps into your conversation after you
get really-drunk."

Bobby: "I never get drunk."

Mark: "Youve been saying that since school, havent you figured out that it's
not true? Youre a fucking lightweight."

Mary; "I out-drink you."

Bobby: "Oh, sure I know it's not true.  But you know how sometimes you say
something and it's not true but youve said it so much you're afraid to admit
it? This is one of those things."

Mark: "Thats one of the most ridiculous things Ive ever heard."

Mary: "strue."

Bobby: "More drinks?"

Mary: "Slow down, honey.  Youre drinking too fast."

Bobby: "Yes, mother.  Mark, get me another."

Mark: "Sorry, Clouseau, Kato is off tonight.  Werent they supposed to meet
us a half hour ago"

Bobby "Who cares? Even when theyre here theyre not here.  Remember when we
were all just friends and we could hang out together? Ah,, our salad days."

Mark: "Oh,  Christ.  Bobby, what happened to you?"

Bobby: "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Mark "You used to be a little fun.  Just a little.  Now you're bitter."

Bobby: "Bitter? The fuck I am.  I'm just as fun as ever."

Mary: "You were fun when you were nineteen, kiddy.  Youre twenty-eight now.
Even if you did fun exercises twice a day you wouldn't be as fun.  And
frankly, you're a little flabby in the fun department."

Mark: "She knows.  Women have a certain wisdom, don't you think?"

Bobby: "Jesus.  Youre my friends, huh?"

Mark: "Not me."

Bobby: "So Ive noticed.  Kato?"

Mark: "Fine.  But don't think I don't notice that you never get off your ass
to get your own drinks."

Mary: "Hes right, you know.  Its not that Nancy and Mort are any different,
really, although they may spend a lot more time pretending to make phone
calls so they can steal a few moments of conversation together.  Theyre the
same people, theyre just in love with each other. Youre the one whos been
different."

Bobby: ". . .yeah, I know."

Mary: "And?"

Bobby: ". . .No. Let it go."

Mary: "Bob - "

Bobby: "For tonight, let it go.  One of these days."

Mary: "You love her, don't you?"

Bobby: "Drinks! Thank the sweet lord!"

Mark: "Ah, should I go have a cigarette?"

Mary: "Bobby?"

Bobby: "No, no, don't be a moron.  You two are both double-fisting. Try to
keep up."

Mary: "Dont you want someone to hold your hair out of your face later,
sweetheart?"

Bobby: "No. Cheers!"

Mark: "Okay, do you guys see that blonde at the bar?"

Mary "The slinky one with all the makeup?"

Bobby: "The slutty one with the big hair?"

Mark: "Yeah.  She asked me if I wanted to sleep with her."

Bobby: "Get out!"

Mary: "No way!"

Mark: "An I that unattractive? Do I have some sort of skin disease that
everyone is too polite to tell me about?"

Mary: "What?"

Mark: "Didn't you ever wonder if somewhere along the line your parents forgot
to pass something along to you, some little detail of conventional hygiene
that everyone else does but you don't know about and everyone you meet
notices that you don't do it and is secretly revolted by it?"

Mary: "No."

Mark: "Of course not.  Youre a woman.  You women wrote the book on hygiene."

Bobby: "And continue to refuse to distribute the copies to we men, despite
the Geneva convention which is quite explicit on this point."

Mary: "Youre both talking crazy."

Mark: "No, seriously.  Women are so hygiene-oriented because of the emphasis
on their appearance.  Men get trained to shave, use deodorant and wipe their
ass -"

Mary: "Very nice."

Mark: "- and thats about it.  Women have a list a mile long and refuse to
divulge most of those activities to us.  Were in a hygiene blackout.  So I
think it very possible that there might be something you guys hate but are
too nice to tell us."

Mary: "Women are never too nice about these things."

Bobby: "It had to be said.  Mark, you are a great man."

Mary: "Youre both insane."

Bobby: "Anyway -what about the chick?"

Mary: "Chick, thats great."

Mark: "Oh, yeah.  I went up there and I had to sort of squeeze through all
those bar fucks to get the tenders attention, right, and she's talking to
some other girl, smoking a cigarette, and I touch her shoulder to get in
there -"

Mary: "Thats all it took?"

Mark: " - Doh! No, seriously, and she turns to me as I'm ordering our drinks,
which I notice Bob Conklin of the Hollow Leg has already finished, and she
says to me Youve got nice hands."

Bobby: "The world waxes unfair."

Mary: "Hands are very important."

Mark: "Ive heard that.  You know what they say about a mans hands..."

Mary: "Double doh! No, silly, it's not like that."

Bobby: So, anyway, I guess you're about to tell us that you're going to be
going now..."

Mark:     "What? Well, no.  What am I, insane?"

Mary:     "Good for you, Markie.  Be decent."

Mark:     "Who knows where she's been, after all."

Mary: "Or not."

Bobby: "Coward."

Mark: "Really, Sergeant Seduction? I suppose youd have taken your chances."

Bobby: "With the ole Ball and Chain around? Never.  But in my salad
days. . ."

Mark: "Yeah yeah yeah."

Mary: "In your salad days, Bob Conklin, you were still a prick.  I'm going to
the bathroom."

Mark: "...Un, maybe I shouldn't ask, but

Bobby: "Oh, ask.  I can feel my dignity slipping away anyway, why not just
go for the gusto? I think thats whats wrong with us, sometimes."

Mark: "I didn't realize there was anything wrong with us."

Bobby: "Sure there is.  We never take the big chances, so we end up pulling
our puds in bars all the time instead of doing anything."

Mark: "Ah: Wisdom."

Bobby: "So, take a chance: ask away."

Mark: "Whats up with you and Mary?"

Bobby: "Obvious, huh?"

Mark: "You could sell the tension by the pound."

Bobby: "She figured out something I hoped she never would, at least not like
this, while I'm drunk in a bar."

Mark: "Oh, christ.  I think you're right about our salad days, man."

Bobby: "Hows that?"

Mark: "Why cant we just go out and have fun, like we used to? Seems like
recently were always having eventful evenings, filled with tears and
violence."

Bobby: "Yeah."

Mark: "Id like us to just grow up.  Maybe it's the booze."

Bobby: "Nope.  I think it's the girls."

Mark: ". . .Oh, man, thats funny."

Bobby: "Nancy and Mort are here."

Mark: "I think I need another drink."

Bobby: "Do NOT leave me alone with them.  I am officially invoking the
buddies code of honor here, Mark, I'm serious. . .Hey, Mort, Nance, hows
tricks?"

Mark: "Hey guys.  Have a seat, I'm getting another round, whatll you have?"

Mort: "I'll have a scotch and soda, Dewars is fine. Nancy?"

Nancy: "Just a light beer, whatevers on tap."

Mark: "Another tonic, Bob?"

Bobby: "Youre a bastard."

Nancy: "How are ya, Bobby C?"

Bobby: "Drunk, but okey.  How are the preparations?"

Mort: "Boring as hell.  I'm reconsidering the eloping possibility."

Nancy: "The hell you are.  We hired a band today."

Bobby: "Thought youd done that months ago?"

Nancy: "We did, but the singer died."

Bobby: "Youre fucking kidding me."

Nancy: "Nope.  Absolute truth.  Weve spent three days looking for a band to
play that date and we were about to just go with a DJ, but Morts cousin had
a friend who helped us out."

Bobby: "Mort, you're an amazing guy."

Mort: "Uh-huh.  How are you, Bob?"                        

Bobby: "Well, I'll tell you, Mort, but you probably would rather not hear
it."

Mort "No, no, I find you endlessly fascinating, Bob.  You ought to know
that.  Id love to hear it."

Nancy: "Mort! Stop being a prick."

Bobby: "Thats okay, Nance.  Morty, I'm drunk, depressed and ill-prepared for
the tongue lashing my girlfriend is going to give me when she breaks up with
me tonight, you're the last person I wanted to see, and I wish I was anywhere
but here right now."

Mort: "...I see.  Where the hell is Mark with those drinks?"

Mark: "Hey, are you okay?"

Mary: "Is that tonic mine?"

Mark: "It is now."

Mary: "Thanks.  I'm fine.  This has been a long time coming, I guess.  I just
hate how he gets when he drinks.  So depressed.  Such a asshole."

Mark: "Wait a second, Bobby? An asshole? Come on!"

Mary: "Very funny, Markie.  Not just the regular run-of-the-mill asshole he
usually is, thats kind of funny most times.  A real asshole I mean. 
Everything he says is a jibe, he doesn't even look at me - "

Mark: "Hey -"

Mary: "I'm dumping him."

Mark: "I know."

Mary "So much for a fun night out with friends, huh?"

Mark: "Actually, I find this endlessly amusing.  Usually all we do is get
silly and bond and suck beer, create tender memories, all that shit.  Ive
got all sorts of rumor and gossip creeping around here tonight.  This is
great."

Mary: "Only because you're not involved."

Mark: "Youre an amazingly perceptive woman, dear."

Bobby: "Wheres my drink?"

Mark: "Oops.  I havent seen your swollen ass off that chair since we came in
chummo.  I left yours behind because I think you need the exercise."

Bobby: "Youre a bastard."

Mark: "And you're sobering up."

Mort: "Jesus, don't let that happen.  He might get surly and we might stop
having so much fucking fun."

Bobby: "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was bringing everyone down.  I didn't
realize the whole evening depended on me.  I didn't -" 

Mary: "Bob -"

Bobby: "- realize that I was charged with the wholesome duty of maintaining
the mood tonight, of single-handedly shouldering- "

Mark: "Oh, christ."

Nancy: "Bobby, whats - "

Bobby: "- the burden of our good time!"

Mark: "Okay, okay.  One more drink."

Mort: "What the fuck?"

Mary: "I wouldn't even ask."

Mark: "Hey, he's talking to my slutty bar girl."

Mary: "That s rich."

Nancy: "Uh, whats going on?"

Mark:  "Oh lord, the theme of our evening."

Mary:  "Ha! It all started out so well."

Nancy: "Look at him! Mare, you ought to just walk over there and slap him
one."

Mary: "I'm afraid under the Geneva convention I am no longer allowed to touch
the son of a bitch again."

Nancy: "Ah! He dumped you!?"

Mark: "Whoops! Watch out Mort, a catfights a-brewin."

Mort: "I bet you my girl would win." 

Mark: "She is a brute, I'll give you that." 

Mary: "Why is that the first choice? I'm dumping him."

Nancy: "Dumping?"

Mary: "I have a grace period, don't I? I have to notify the interested party
within, what, twenty-four hours or I get my bitch certificate."

Mort: "You cant call her a brute, man."

Mark: "I meant brute in a cute way, of course.  Sort of brutie."

Mort: "Well, you're not allowed,  kiddo.  I take exception."

Mark: "Okay, Okay, in the interests of world peace, I take back the brute
remark.  your girlfriend is a delicate flower which the bees worship,
dancing and cavorting."

Mort: "Okay then."

Mark: "Okay."

Mort: "Only I may call her brute. 

Nancy: "Wow.  This is pretty big news."

Mary:     "Whatever."

Nancy: "Why?"

Mary: "Whatever.  Take your pick.  Take a look at him, sweating up there -
whatever. Cheers!"

Nancy: "Yeah, cheers. "

Mark: "The girls look sulky."

Mort:  "With us for company? No way."

Mark:  "What s going on over there?"

Nancy: "Were having a bitch session, is all, no testosterone allowed."

Mary: "I'm telling her about my plans to enslave the male gender and force
them to service me."

Mort: "Uh. . ."

Mark: "Where do I sign up?"

Nancy: "Pig."

Mary: "Pig."

Mort: "Pig."

Mark: "Whatever.  There is a sign up sheet?"

Bobby: "For what?"

Mary: "Why don t you sit next to Nance?"

Bobby: "Why don't I?"

Mark: "We were discussing why men suck."

Mort: "Thoughts?"

Bobby: "What, again?"

Mary: "I would think youd have a few thoughts on this subject, dear."

Bobby: "Not a one.  I completely disagree."

Mary: "Really, honey?"

Mark: "MAYDAY MAYDAY, pull out while you still can!"

Mort: "Thats what I said to myself, but I wouldn't listen.  Now I'm engaged."

Mark: "Whoa."

Mort: "OUCH! Joke!"

Nancy: "Not funny."

Mary: "You were saying something about men not being assholes."

Bobby: "Before I was rudely interrupted by my esteemed colleague and his
boorish comments I was about to say that men are neither better or worse, on
the whole, than women, and anyone who says so is a self-serving and
sanctimonious woman."

Mark: "Whoa.  Check please!"

Mary: "Really? Thats very interesting."

Bobby: "What, are we supposed to buy into all that earth-mother sensitive
healer crap about women? I mean, are you guys really supposed to be smarter
and wiser and gentler just because of your biology? Come on.  Some of the
meanest bastards Ive ever known have been women."

Mary: "You have no idea."

Bobby: "Huh?"

Mark: "Bob, Bob, let it lie, help me pick some songs out on the juke, huh?"

Bobby: "What does that mean?"

Mark: "Bob, come on."

Nancy: "What an asshole."

Mort: "Wait a second, a half hour ago he was one of our good friends.  Now
he's an asshole?"

Nancy: "Well. .. . . "

Mort: "Thats not fair, I don't think."

Mary: "You guys sure do stick together, don't you?"

Mort: "Oh, fuck that shit, Mare.  Where do you get off? Check that fine
print and tell me where I became a physical part of your boyfriend, to take
his blames and share his glories."

Nancy: "Hes got a point."

Mary: "Traitor."

Bobby: "Theres not a single Beatles CD on this box.  How can you even have a
juke in a bar without a Beatles CD?"

Mark: "No Descendants or Circle Jerks either, but you don't hear me whining."

Bobby: "Whining, huh? Have A done a damned thing  right  tonight?"

Mark: "Depends who you ask, apparently."

Bobby: "Whats up with her?"

Mark: "Can you  possibly not know?"

Bobby: ". . .I can be as dumb as necessary."

Mark: "Well, brighten up, Einstein, or theres a lynching in the works.  If
the girls go for your throat Mort won't lift a finger and I'm too puny to be
much help.  I cry like a little girl at the sight of blood, too."

Bobby: "Fuck her."

Mark: "Good attitude -Hey! The Violent Femmes!"

Mort: "I still have nightmares about the first wedding I ever went to. I was
about ten or so, and my Mom dressed me up in this powder blue suit, complete
with fake carnation in my lapel.  I must have slept on my head that night
because every single hair on my head was cowlicked, I was a walking brillo
pad, and nothing helped."

Nancy "Oh No! Poor sweetie!"

Mort: "Of course all the old ladies in my family thought I was sweetness
itself, and spent the day tasting me with ugly, wet kisses, all I remember
are these huge, painted faces sagging towards me, blocking out all the
light.  But that wasn't the worst part."

Mary: "Criminy."

Mort: "I didn't know the rules, so when they called all the single men out
for the garter belt, and my aunts thought it would cute for me to go out
there, I didn't know any better."

Nancy: "Oh my god, you're -"

Mort: "I looked u and-this thing was sailing through the air towards me, and
all of my cousins were diving for cover, running away like madmen, and it
was coming straight for me, I didn't even have to move, you know? It sailed
towards me as if some guardian angel was guiding it right to me."

Mary: "Gosh."

Nancy: "Did you catch it?"

Mort: "I was ten, you know, I didn't think there was any reason not to catch
it, All-I knew, in that perfect moment of pure curiosity and competition,
was that I had a clear shot at it that none of the bigger kids would get it.
To miss it seemed, I don't know, cowardly.  So I took a single step forward
and caught it."

Nancy: ". . .Yeah?"

Mort: "This. . .silence crept over the hall, you know? Suddenly I was
standing in the middle of all my cousins, and they were all looking at me
with this horrible aw-shucks look, as if they were supposed to babysit me
and I caught on fire or something.  I didn't know what was going on. Hell the
fucking band even stopped playing.  For a moment there was nothing but
people staring at me."

Mary: This is beginning to explain a lot about you, kiddo."

Nancy: "Mental scars."

Mort: "I'm sure.  Anyway, my uncle came over and explained what I had to do,
and I burst into tears on the spot."

Mary: "Rather a sensitive child, werent you?"

Mort: "My Aunt Myrtle had caught the bouquet."

Nancy: "Oh my lord"

Mary: "Aunt Myrtle?"

Mort: "She was already a thousand years old, a shrunken, damp woman who
tried to look sixty via the magic of makeup.  All the kids hated her, she
insisted on kissing you a million times a day, squeezing you until you were
bugeyed.  She was a man-crazy elderly, too, and always dressed like a
forty-year old.  In short, I was staring at the swollen, wrinkled thighs of
my Aunt Myrtle like destiny itself.  I ran into the bathroom and wouldn't
come until the ice cream was served."

Nancy: "Poor baby."

Mary: "And you're getting married? Good luck.  I give you until the wedding
march, and then you're in the bathroom, alternately puking and screaming
visions of Aunt Myrtle swimming around you."

Mort: "Nope.  That was true before Aunt Myrtle.  With Aunt Myrtle,  I'm not
making it out of the Limo."

Nancy: "Great.

Bobby: "Was college so long ago?"

Mark: "Time for the drunkenly sentimental big talk about life? I had no idea
wed reached that stage.  Usually I like to be drunker, but hell,Youre a good
friend.  College was six years and some months ago, Captain Glimmer."

Bobby: "God, I cant believe it.  It seems like only yesterday we were
sitting in the big oak out behind Scott Hall smoking joints and -"

Mark: "Being nineteen.  It was only once, and it was a long time ago, man. 
Sit in the past and it will eat you alive."

Bobby: "Yeah, but it was fun.  And easy.  I was never -"

Mark: "This sad? Bull! You are the same Bob Conklin who kept me up playing
The Final Cut by Pink Floyd over and over again for six hours? contemplating
suicide because Linda Hinkler didn't want to be more then friends.  Compared
to that, you're absolutely cheerful tonight."

Bobby: "Wow.  Linda Hinkler."

Mark: "Come on, man, you cant mope around like this, lifes too short.  If
you're gonna be depressed over Mare, well, thats fine.  Thats natural.  But
don't stand here and tell me how much better it was when we were kids.  Life
wasn't any better.  We were unhappy, drunk, and disaffected, we slept with
people we shouldn't and we fell in love with people who didn't want us, our
lives were an ongoing maelstrom of disappointment and violence, and I for
one am glad to have my own money, my own place, and my friends at arms
length."

Bobby: "Mark, you are no fun to bitch to."

Mary: "Are you nervous?"

Nancy: "Of course.  What if I trip walking down the aisle?"

Mort: "I wouldn't marry you then."

Mary: "Yeah, like you're the picture of grace.  I cant wait until you get to
dance."

Mort: "I'm a great dancer.  Ask Nancy.  If Id been born a few years earlier I
would have been on Dance Fever."

Mary: "Scary thought."

Nancy: "Yeah.  As a matter of fact, just the fact that you apparently nurse
a latent desire to be on Dance Fever takes me doubt the wisdom of our union,
boyo."

Mort: "Your faith in our love seems to get thinner as time goes on, dear."

Nancy: "Love? Who said anything about love? I'm marrying you for sex.  My
toes have never curled so much in all my life."

Mort: ". . .Well, what the hell are you laughing at?"

Mary: "Oh, lord. . .nothing. Morty, nothing. . ."

Nancy: "Oh, sweetie- "

Mort: "Hey, don't, Mare."

Nancy: "Mort, why not see what the other cocks are up to?"

Mort: "Great.  Thanks."

Bobby: "Whats the matter, Mort, the squaws get tired of your patter?"

Mort: "Never.  I'm too much for then.  This always happens to me,
overwhelming females. Theyre discussing the possibilities of sharing me to
minimize exhaustion."

Bobby: "Starting that harem we keep discussing, I see."

Mort: "Why waste a potent supernova such as myself?"

Mark: "Mary doesn't look like she's enjoying herself -although if she's
contemplating sex with you, I can understand her reaction."

Bobby: "Oh, jeez. . ."

Mort: "No, no, cowboy, you stay here with we hunters.  She doesn't want you
right now."

Bobby: "I know."

Mark: ". . .Well, theres thirty seconds of wholesale silence.  You don't
get that quality of silence much these days."

Mort: "Stop being a fucking smartass, Mark.  Just because you don't give a
shit about anyone else doesn't give you the right to be an asshole."

Bobby: "Being an asshole is an inalienable right. I should know."

Mark: "I'll get another round."

Mort: "Dont worry about him, he's being a prick."

Bobby: "His natural state.  Why do we keep inviting him?"

Mort: "Whats up with Mary?

Bobby: "Aw,  fuck it.  I don't want to discuss the futility of being Bob."

Mort: "How about the futility of being Morton?"

Bobby: "You couldn't even look futility up in the dictionary, kiddo."

Mort: "I'm not sure I want to get married."

Bobby: "Oh, Jee-sus, cant I get to bitch exclusively for once? I don't want
group therapy, I want navel contemplation."

Mort: "You don't want to discuss it."

Bobby: "And I don't want to hear it.  I guess I want it all, huh?"

Mark: "Here we are.  Bobby, are you going on about yourself again? The rest
of us have obsessions wed like to air out, you know."

Bobby: "Okay, go ahead."

Mary "I don't want to talk about this with you."

Nancy: "Okay.  "

Mary: "I'm sorry."

Nancy: "Its okay.

Mary: "I mean, I want to I but -"

Nancy: "Christ, Mary, it s okay."

Mary: "No, it's not! Nothing is.  But thats okay, you know, because it never
was. Its the realization that hurts."

Nancy: "Mary, what did he do?"

Mary: "Nothing.  He just stopped wanting to be with me, and didn't get around
to telling me.  The bastard."

Nancy: "Men have a hard time being human."

Mary: "Oh, bull.  I don't want to talk about this with you."

Mark: "I'm back."

Nancy: "Mark, we were -"

Mary: "Hey, Markie, sit down."

Mark "At least someone loves me."

Mary:"Lets not talk about love, kay?"

Nancy: "Maybe we ought to call it a night."

Mark:"I have a story."

Nancy:"Great."

Mary: "Markie, I'm not in -"

Mark: "Bear with me, I'm drunk.  I used to date this girl Monica Ewes,
absolutely hot, built like lycra was invented for her."

Nancy: "Classy."

Mary: "Markie, I'm disappointed."

Mark: "No, listen.  I dated her for a few months, and for the first three
weeks it was great because there was this anticipation of laying her, you
know? The exciting idea that any night I took her out might be the night she
opted for that extra glass of wine and I got my in."

Nancy: "Oh, groan."

Mark: "Then, for the next few months, it was great because we were having
sex."

Mary: "Naturally."

Mark: "Scorn does not become you.  Sex is great glue, it kept us together
even though I didn't really like her."

Mary: "Sweet."

Mark: "One day I was watching her eat, and I realized that I didn't want to
even smell her perfume anymore.  The thought of having to hear her tell the
kitten story again made me shiver in fear."

Nancy: "The kitten story?

Mark: "But I was trapped by the Nice-Guy syndrome, so I dated her in shame
for six weeks before I finally got pissed enough to dump her during the
Lukas Restaurant fiasco."

Mary: "We don't want to know."

Nancy: "The Nice-Guy syndrome?"

Mark: "Yeah.  Listen, you spend your life telling yourself you're not an
asshole, you know? You walk into bars and think you're the nicest guy here,
no one could possibly be as nice as you. Then suddenly you find yourself
staying with someone just because they can make weep in bed."

Mary: "Weep?"

Mark: "I'm a sensitive lad."

Nancy: "Youre a wimp."

Mark: "You realize suddenly that you're just using her, just getting laid,
and you're in terrible danger of not being a nice guy.  I mean, when you
first start dating someone it's all physical, nothing wrong with that it's
natural.  But after a few months you're supposed to care about her -youve
probably said so, and maybe you thought you meant it.  Suddenly, your normal
physical urges are making you a bad person.  You don't want to admit it.  So,
you maintain the relationship despite your increasing loathing of the girl."

Mary: "Pathetic."

Mark: "Honest.  You so desperately want to be a nice guy you keep seeing her
until you cant stand it any more and end up hurting her twice as much.  You
see?"

Nancy: "Sex."

Mark: "No, that wasn't about sex at all.  Werent you listening?"

Mary: "I was."

Nancy: "You were?"

Mary: "Yeah.  Thanks Mark, you're wise beyond you're years."

Mark: "But I'm still an asshole."

Bobby: "I ever tell you how we met?"

Mort: "I know how we met, Bob?"

Bobby: "Not you and me, idiot, me and Mary."

Mort "You and Mary. . .yeah, wasn't it in college?"

Bobby: "Just after."

Mort: "At a dance. . ."

Bobby: "My sisters wedding.  Well, the first one."

Mort: "Maybe you never told me."

Bobby: "Want to hear it?"

Mort: "I don't suppose theres any choice."

Bobby: "Sure there is.  We could talk about how you and Nancy met."

Mort: "Okay: I stole her washing machine."

Bobby: "What?"

Mort: "When I was a young man three years ago I had no money and no way of
getting any, I was hiding out from credit card companies and sleeping on
couches, eating Ramen Noodles three times a day.  I used to go to
laundromats and sneak my clothes into other peoples washers."

Bobby: "What?! Ive never heard of that!"

Mort: "Youve always been monied gentry."

Bobby: "Oh yeah, forgot."

Mort: "Anyway, I was taking all of her delicate underthings out of the
washer, and I got caught."

Bobby: "And was smitten with-your impish charm."

Mort: "She called the manager and threatened me with incarceration."

Bobby: "Youre obviously made for each other."

Mort: "Well, I offered to take her to dinner to make up for it."

Bobby: "Smooth. "

Mort: "She called me names."

Bobby: "When does this get good?"

Mort: "SO, I called her names back, we got into a really heated argument,
cursing, yelling. The manager had to step between us to keep us from getting
physical.  It was the most erotic experience of my life."

Bobby: "Huh?"

Mort: "When the cops released me the next morning. . ."

Bobby: "Cops!"

Mort: "I couldn't think of anything but her.  When I finally tracked her down
with a little judicious stalking, I found out that shed been thinking of me,
too.  Ever since then, weve been rutting like animals."

Bobby: "Thanks for that extra bit of detail.  You always go the extra mile
for us.  Its great."

Mort: "You want to tell me how you and Mare met?"

Bobby: "Not as cute as you.  We got drunk at my sisters wedding and left our
dates to go make out in the kitchen.  I told her a lot of lies that I still
havent admitted to."

Mort: "Thats so you, you bring this misery upon yourself, you know."

Bobby: "I know. Another?"

Mort: "Not right now."

Bobby: "Dont let you stop me."

Mark: "Is he still talking about college?"

Mort: "No."

Mark: "Thank god."

Mary: "Who cares? Whenever muchacho pequeno gets sad he starts talking about
the fucking good old days.  Fucker.  Another?"

Nancy: "I'll get them."

Mary: "Dont leave me with the men!"

Mort: "Hah! Dont leave us with the woman!"

Mary: "Well, boys, I suppose I'm the bitch of the evening."

Mort: "Come on Mary, give us a little credit.  Just a little. Why cant we
have a civil conversation about this?"

Mary: "Civil, huh? My boyfriend is secretly in love with your fiance.  How
civil can you get?"

Mark: ". . .Jeez, did anyone see that elephant burst from that bag?"

Mary: "Oh, shit, I'm sorry."

Mark: "Why bother?"

Mort: "Wow."

Mark:". . .Well, the fun has finally gone out of this evening."

Mary: "Oh, Jesus, Morty, I - "

Mort: "Hey, you didn't say she secretly loved him.  I cant worry about how
Bob feels."

Mark: "Very civilized.  Dont you want to hit him?"

Mort: "Sure.  But I won't."

Mark: "Good man.

Mary: "You know, this was supposed to be a fun night, a bunch of friends out
for some drinks, fun."

Nancy: "What did you creeps do?"

Mark: "Mort started slapping her around, and -"

Mary: "Oh, Fuck YOU Markie.  Shut up!"

Mort: "Take a walk, Mark."

Mark:"And hang out with Bobby? Christ, thats harsh."

Mort:"Go before she claws your eyes out, man."

Mark : "The partys breaking up."

Bobby: What party? Is she fucking crying again?"

Mark: "Youre just full of sympathy arent you?"

Bobby: "I'm very drunk."

Mark: "Bobbys gonna throw up.  Bobbys looking green."

Bobby: "And Markies an asshble.  Heard that one tonight."

Mark: "Yeah, Yeah. Look, I'm sorry.  I don't know how to handle this personal
stuff, you know?"

Bobby: "Neither do I."

Mark: "I'll go stand over there."

Bobby: "Thanks.

Mort: Maybe I should take a walk."

Nancy: "Dont go."

Mary: "Yeah, Morty, youve got to stay and defend the male gender."

Mort: "I'm not up to that, kids.  I'm too delicate for that."

Nancy: "Stay."

Mort: "And hear about how Big Bob loves you and other mysteries of the
universe? I don't know."

Mary: Mort, stay, please.  I'm done weeping.  I promise not to weep over that
asshole any more tonight."

Mort: "Good.  Weeping women rake me nervous."

Mary: "Doesn't bode well for you, Nancy."

Nancy: "Now Ive got Bob as a backup  -oops, not funny."

Mort: "Not now, no, but maybe a few years from now.  Mary, what exactly are
you upset about? Is he an asshole, or do you want him? I get so confused
when I drink."

Mary: "It doesn't even matter.  I'll be right back."

Nancy: "Not a good idea."

Mary: "I need another drink."

Mort: "Sweetheart."

Mary: "Move over."

Bobby: "Umph.  Come to castrate me?"

Mary: "No.  Just to dump you officially, jerk.  How long have you not wanted
to be with me?"

Bobby: "I think were both too drunk for this conversation."

Mary: "How long, Bob?"

Bobby: ". . .a while."

Mary: "Youre a fucking coward."

Bobby: "Okay."

Mary: "Okay?"

Bobby:"...okay?"

Mary: "Whatever. Consider your walking papers stamped.  I don't know what you
think you're walking to, you idiot, I don't know what you think you're fucking
trading up to - "

Bobby: "Mary -"

Mary: "- what?"

Bobby: "I have to tell you something."

Mary: "Huh.  This should be good."

Bobby: "I don't think I ever wanted you."

Nancy: "Holy shit!

Mort: "Nancy, why not get her outside."

Mary: "Fucking bastard!"

Mort: "Nancy!"

Mark: "She drew blood.  I'm impressed.  And frightened."

Mort: "Mary, let Nancy walk you outside, okay?"

Mary: "Bastard."

Nancy: "Come on, honey, lets go, okay?"

Mark: ". . .fireworks at last! I thought it was going to be boring."

Mort: "Shut up, will you? Weve got to administer CPR or something."

Mark: ". . .Oh, thats rich!"

Bobby: "Laughing at me?"

Mark:  "You have to admit it's easy tonight."

Bobby: "Laugh it up, chuckles.  When I get sick in about ten minutes, I'm
sitting next to you."

Mort: "Let re see that lip. . .ah, I did worse to you two years ago, when
you tried to kiss Nancy."

Mark: "What? When was this?!"

Bobby: "Two years ago."

Mark: "Obviously I am not part of the secret inner circle here.  I think I'm
offended."

Bobby: "I have to tell you guys something, and then we can go."

Mark: "Sounds ominous."

Bobby: "Morton, I love your fiance.  Before you hit me - "

Mort: "I'm not going to hit you."

Bobby: "- just know that I didn't realize it until you and her started to
date.  I suddenly realized that Id never have her.  It ate at me.  It ate at
me."

Mark: "Bob, you are really going to regret this tomorrow."

Bobby: "I regret everything, all the time, man.  Tomorrow is a drop in the
bucket."

Mort: "Go on."

Bobby: "What else is there? I suddenly realize Id been dating the wrong girl
for months, I started having trouble showing Mary the right enthusiasm.  And
then, you cocksucking bastard, and then you married her."

Mort: "Not yet."

Bobby: "Soon enough.  Anyway.  Thats why I never liked you."

Mark: "Okay, we go now.

Mort: "Not so fast.  You know what you are, Bob?"

Bobby: "An asshole?"

Mort: "Youre a fucking black hole, man.  You suck people in, suck them dry,
and absorb them into your tender, tortured soul.  You justify your misery by
creating it yourself.  You use people and if you say one more word Itm going
to hit you."

Mark: "Uh, I'll just be -"

Mort: "Stay..I want a witness in case I kill the bastard."

Mark: "Lets just go."

Mort: ". . .Okay."

Nancy: "Are we leaving?"

Mort: "Most certainly."

Mary: "Did you hit him?"

Mort: "No."

Mary: "Too bad."

Mark: "Taxi!"

Bobby: "Hey! Bartender! How much is the rent here?"

Bartender: "I think youd best leave.  Youre a friggin trouble maker."

Bobby: "Typical."

THE END

======================================== 
MY FRIENDS ARE DRUNKEN IDIOTS The
Next Issue Anticipated: 
========================================

Who knows what the future brings? I do. I can see the next few decades of my
life stretching out in front of me like some sort of disco spectre, the
sort of white-suited apparition you thought youd never see again, much less
have to dance with. I see no reason to bring dow