========================================
*** THE INNER SWINE ***
Volume 3, Issue 3, December 1997
www.innerswine.com 
========================================

"Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings." -
Heinrich Heine

CONCEPT BY Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita
COVER ART BY Jeof Vita
EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers
PUBLISHER: Cassie Moore
WEBMASTERS: Jeof Vita & Ken West
INSPIRATION: "Searching for Bobby Fischer"
ADVICE & FREE DRINKS:  Over his lifetime, Ken West has subsidized my perilously
cavalier drinking more than once, now that I think about it. 
PROOFREADER EXTRAORDINAIRE: Karen Accavallo, even if she does it only to have
an excuse to search each issue for her name.
OVERALL OFFICIAL COOL CHICK: Lauren Strutzel

OFFICIAL STIMULANT: At the risk of being trendy, The Inner Swine loves coffee.

FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: Elizabeth Augoustiniatos, for moving back to New Jersey
(which I know in my heart she did solely to be closer to me) and for  trying her
best to sink down to my level; Lauren L. J. Strutzel, for occassionally even
making my level look pretty good and for not moving away just yet; Jeof Vita for
once again providing the best cover art known to man, while putting up with my
bullshit; Misty S. Quinn, esq, for continuing to be a person I can count on for
unsullied support and affection (thanks) and for being my trophy date with good
grace; Kim Darconte, who got married ; Laura Pergolizzi, who didn't; Wes Hegg, as
always, for supporting the Swine up in Canada despite the fact that we do
nothing for him; Ellen Long, of JoyBuzzer fame, for inviting me to her house and
for linking their site to mine; Pete Nesbitt, for letting me print his weirdo
cartoons and for also linking his site to mine (see page 59); Karen Accavallo,
for not being nearly as crazy as I make her out to be in this zine; R.A.
Haberman, for making a (doomed) attempt to stay cool despite her newfound
parenthood; Alice Pucknat, for subsidizing the Swine with good cheer (although
she did call my lack of subscribers 'pathetic')

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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EDITORIAL: "Pig In Shit #9: Want To Let it Burn: Violence in America"
COMMENTARY: "Suck it Up: Welcome to the Wimp Generation"
COMMENTARY: "The Stink of Wasted Bachelorhood"
COMMENTARY: "Our New Year's Article"
COMMENTARY: "American Wedding Confidential #3: It's a Family Affair"
OBITUARY: "Personality Goes a Long Way"
FICTION: "Order Up the Night"
ESSAY: "My Eventual Stalker"
FICTION: "I Don't Even Trust Me"

----------------------------------------
The Inner Swine Volume 3 Issue 3. 
Magazine published May, September, and January by Oinking Sow, Inc. (There is no
company, really)  Individual subscription rates: $5.00 (cheap!) per year in
U.S.; $6.00  (cheap!) per year foreign including Canada. Single Copy $1.50
(cheap!) plus $1.00 (cheap!) for postage and handling if ordered by mail,   but
stop teasing me, you're never going to order a subscription, you heartless
bastards.  Free trades are absolutely entertained, send me something, and I will
mail you treats.  Checks payable to Jeff Somers, Editor. Address submissions and
correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, 293 Griffith Street #9, Jersey
City, NJ 07307.  But if you send me something, make it good or I will be
angered.  All submissions or requests for Guidelines (there are no guidelines,
though) must be accompanied by S.A.S.E.  Anyone who sends me money of any kind
for any purpose will be flown to New York City for a weekend and given the
opportunity to take Misty S. Quinn, esq. (above left) out and get her stinking
drunk, which isn't very hard.

========================================
WHAT THE FUCK'S BEEN GOIN' ON?
========================================

I AM AMAZED BY THE NUMBER OF THINGS IN THIS UNIVERSE WHICH ARE STICKY: Im
finding it harder and harder to find good reasons to leave my apartment. Beer,
the threat of termination from my job, the discomfort of bedsores...these are
really all I have left as far as motivation goes. I end up staying home a lot,
which makes me really sensitive to all the funk and dirt that a single male
accumulates, so I clean a lot. It doesn't do any good. All my cleaning just seems
to mutate the dirt into a sticky substance that eventually collects all the dust
and dirt unto itself, a huge monster that forces me to hide in my bathroom until
I sober up, when it miraculously disappears.

Since issue 3(2) came out all those months ago, what I've mostly been doing is
living, breathing, eating, and watching baseball. The world series is over now
and its all said and done, and nothing will fill this empty wound in my heart
until March...when spring training begins again. As my friend Karen would say: I
miss baseball, like the deserts miss the rain.

Aside from that, I've been drinking, which I continually lobby to be counted as
an activity, and attending weddings, which usually resulted in more drinking. I
am slipping quietly into the dark twilight of my twenties, and while I won't bore
you with pathetic I am getting old bullshit from a child who still can't be
trusted to pay his bills on time much less comprehend his 401K fund, I will say
that I find myself increasingly questioning my direction, or, more specifically,
my lack thereof. Of course, something else I've been busy doing is just barely
not getting fired, so I guess it all ties together.

CHESS and COFFEE: Ah, my new loves. I've always been a coffee drinker, but
recently I've been sucking the stuff down at a really dangerous pace, to the
point where back in July I was suffering from heart palpitations due to the
heroic caffeine intake. And my father taught me the basics of playing chess when
I was but a lad, but recently I saw "Searching for Bobby Fischer" and it clicked
in my head just how fascinating this game is, and I've been attempting to learn
to play well ever since. I know I'll never be a GrandMaster (since almost all of
them were under 10 when they played their first serious game) but maybe I could
be, you know, average.

Yeah yeah  -shut up about chess already. Heathens. Probably a bunch of checkers
lovers. I think chess appeals to me because in this increasingly chance-ridden
and luck-assisted life, its a game that requires no luck at all: no roll of the
dice, no shuffle of the cards, no good spin on the ball. Its just your brains
against their brains. Thats it. Since every day of my life is a gruesome
pot-luck of unpaid bills, violence and hangovers, this kind of methodical
process reassures me that theres a plan in the universe, and that I am part of
it, even if thats not really true.

If chess doesn't convince me, theres always the "new" AC/DC song with Bon Scott
on vocals that just got released - its basically an early version of Whole Lotta
Rosie before the boys sobered up enough to polish it. I don't care. AC/DCs never
been about "creativity" or "originality". Its about thirty-thousand 13-20 year
olds in denim pumping their fists in unison, or else its about beer  - and
either way Im glad for a new song. Rock on!

========================================
My Disgustingly Inflated EGO: 
Heres what they're saying about ME: 
========================================

Heres something I got in the mail from my website the other day. Personally, Im
getting a little worried about our lovely friend Karen:

"Hello.  I am a charter member of the waiting-to-die crowd and thought you might
like to sample some of my poetry for your magazine: I have many more selections
for your perusal, in such categories as: PLAGUE, VERMIN, DISEASE, DISMEMBERMENT,
HYPOTHERMIA, WAR, ETHNIC CLEANSING, HANDBALL. Please let me know.  Thanks for
your time.

CAULDRON OF ENNUI 
by karen accavallo

It is raining.
A cold rain, cold as my 
heart 
I stare at the rain
And slowly 
I
expire."

The saddest part of this is that I've received lots of poetry that is just as
bad, if not worse. You don't know what I go through  -I am confident that someday
soon I will sainted for putting up with all the badly written bullshit that
comes my way. Obviously, we all know that Karen can write much gooder than this
and this is simply a sad, sad cry for help.

Our attractive friend and confidant Misty S. Quinn also submitted a poem to us.
What it lacks in technical expertise or style, it certainly makes up for with
soul-shattering emotion:

"TURTLES by Misty S. Quinn, esq.

Turtles, turtles, turtles -
they are green and slow 
some live in the water 
they like to swim real slow
how i love little turtles 
all hard and shy 
they live in peace 
until the day they die"

I don't like to review Zines (why people insist on filling their own zines with
endless reviews I will never know) but I do respond to correspondence: I got an
email from Rob Howington a.k.a The Loser: "Hey, Jeff,...Got Inner Swine 3 (2) in
the mail last week. Reading it over while taking shits at work this week.
Nothing like a good zine or book to read while depositing my waste into the
dark, secretive bowels of Fort Worth(less)s infrastructure...my wife, Crista,
and I are BIG Seinfeld fans. Your piece on the show hits the nail on the head."
Thanks Rob! This seems a good opportunity to remind all my faithful readers of
The Inner Swine rule Numero Uno: JEFF IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Lets never forget that,
hmmmn? The Loser also sent me two poems which I didn't like, although I think the
title of the second poem was sheer genius: "YOU SOUTHERN FRIED REFRIED ENCHILADA
TACO BELL MOTHER FUCKER."

WEVE FINALLY been threatened with legal remedy, kids! After all this time, I was
beginning to doubt if The Inner Swine would ever be slapped with a
publicity-generating lawsuit or such, but fate has finally smiled on us, at
least a tiny little bit. The father of one of our mailing list people doesn't
want his minor daughter receiving us in the mail, and he threatened to turn the
matter over to The Postmaster General if we continued to mail her our sinister,
twisted thoughts. Not exactly Judge Ito calling us degenerates on national TV,
but its a start. Hopefully, other potential litigants will see how quickly we
kowtowed to this bluenose and this will encourage them to sue us.

ELLEN LONG, the driving force behind JoyBuzzer, the Too Much Joy fanclub
newsletter, emailed me with bunches of good vibes: "just wanted to tell you how
much I like Inner Swine, and so does everyone else I loan it to (you know, sort
of like everyone does to me with Joybuzzer - why pay when you can steal someones
once you already have the promo shit we give away).  So, I like your zine.  That
was the point of that rambling sentence.  And thanks for comping me on it.  I
guess now I have to comp you, right?  Why not?  At least I get something in
return from you!   Probably 1/4 of our mailing list is friends/favors to the
band/record companies/radio stations/management people.  So what if it costs $2
per issue to put out?  It promotes the band!"

MARC and LYDIA of AZMACOURT sent me two issues in which we were reviewed, first
they liked us, then they read my article on Jerry Seinfeld and were so horrified
by either my sloppy theory or my attack on a beloved sitcom that they ran
frothing for their word processors. Ah, criticism, the poor mans power. So
turned off by my article were they that they not only stopped reading the issue
but now apologise to their readers for giving me a good review in the first
place. Either they have no sense of humor and really meant this bizarre attack,
or I have no sense of humor and can't see how my casual deconstruction of an NBC
situation comedy got them so worked up. Who knows? Still, my opinion of their
zine has not changed:  Azmacourt is an interesting zine since it has a very
specific point of view: its an Asthma zine, focusing on asthma suffering and the
people involved. Or, at least thats one-third of the zine, the other two thirds
being fiction, poetry (all written by this guy named Beau and no one else, Marc
is very clear about this) and zine reviews. Good writing and interesting
viewpoints, what more could you ask? Drop them a line at Marc & Lydia,
Azmacourt, PO Box 890535, OKC, OK 73189 or Azmacourt@aol.com. They sell
subscriptions ($2 or trade), ad space, and actually buy fiction and art (thats
right, buy). So say hello. Or don't.

SETH over at FactSheet Five (I keep hearing that they're dead, but they keep
emailing me) sent me the latest review of The Inner Swine appearing in FF5:
"Inner Swine: A conglomerate of essays and short fiction that bats around .500
for entertainment. Jeof tells you how to sneak personal work into the office
while Jeff explains how to tell real friends from passing acquaintances and why
vegetarians are assholes." Now, this may sound like sour grapes, but is this
really the best they can do? Love us or hate us, but this middle-of-the-road
review smacks of a non-review. Basically, they just say we exist  -thats it.
Jeesh! Wrinkle that brow a little and squirt out an opinion, okay?

TRASHCAN BANGIN CULTURE sent me a copy of their zine, which has devoted itself
to synth-core and other strange bands. I was a little amazed to discover I have
heard of a lot of these bands. Its a cut-and-paste kind of zine, but not nearly
as confused and sloppy as many such zines are. If youve ever heard of a band
called "Sheep on Drugs", this might be something youd want to check out. Also,
the Editor, King James, has his own band, Bettys Trash and they keep sending me
passes and gig announcements I'll never use. Thanks! They also sent me all sorts
of stickers and stuff, so they're pretty cool. Contact: Trashcan Bangin Culture,
c/o King James, 260 Fairmont Rd., Long Valley, NJ 07853 or
http://members.aol.com/trashcanbc/index.html for more info.

TAIL SPINS #29 arrived in my mailbox in October and I didn't read it because it
had way too many words.

PAUL T. OLSON sent me Goth Shmoth #6 and I must admit the two color cover is
quite impressively done. The fiction doesn't quite grab my attention but its well
done and he has a lot of fans. The best parts are the little things, always the
true sign of a quality publication. Besides, he's got SubGenius stuff littered
about, and that always frightens me into saying nice things.

TOO MUCH JOY has not had a new album, or NYC show, or anything in quite a number
of months. Nor, I hesitate to point out, have any of its members contacted mto
tell me what a great magazine I produce. Is it too much to ask that they play
Manhattan more often and that I get comped on drinks when they do? I think not.
Oh well, I just keep playing "...Finally" over and over and weeping into my
home-made cocktails. When the tour comes, The Inner Swine Inner Circle knows
they will be obnoxiously lobbied into attending a show with me, and fear the
coming.

========================================
*** EDITORIAL *** 
Pig In Shit #9:  
Want to Let it Burn 
Violence in America: 
Don't Make Me Come Over There. 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

"It's about coming up and staying on top or screaming 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin
cop" -Sublime

Ever wonder how our society keeps functioning despite the fact that we're all
extremely violent and are ready to peel a cap in anyone's face at a moment's
hint of disrespect? I sure don't. But every few years someone will lean over to
me while we're riding public transportation and say something about how the
world is going to shit and how people are animals, or something like that.
Usually this happens late at night while I am fighting the urge to throw up all
over the inside of the bus after an evening spent drinking a thick blue liquor,
like something  from a Klingon wedding, and eating cheese fries. And usually the
person speaking is some tight-knit old woman who looks at my short hair and
cherubic face and decides that I am a good example of a "nice boy". I want to
argue with her, tell her what I really think on the subject, dazzle her with
statistics and my caustic wit, but I usually can't summon the energy. What I
usually do is throw up on her.

Let's face it, the idea that the human race has degenerated so alarmingly in the
past few years is not a new one, or even a recent one. Throughout history,
uptight middle class wimps have been bemoaning the decline of the culture, the
triumph of vulgarity, and, especially, the increase of violence. This argument
is compelling and seemingly reasonable, and the people who go around farting it
into the atmosphere have plenty of bullshit numbers and horror stories to back
it up. It seduces us into a general acceptance of a worldview which is very
simply, inaccurate. That this complaint gets recycled throughout the ages must
say something about humans, as does the simple fact that none of it is true.

Americans invented violence, kids. Well, if we didn't invent it, we certainly
have perfected it. We take a perverse sort of pride in the number of homocides
committed in the U.S.A. every year, we celebrate violence on television, in
films, books, just about every arena available to us. Our kids get guns for
their tenth birthday and we shoot people who cut us off on the highway. We throw
newborn babies into the garbage and gather outside of prisons to cheer when the
lights go dim. The entire world is terrified of us; you can see them crowding
out of our way when we visit their country, eyeing us fearfully, and you can see
it in the way tourists drop to the sidewalk and beg for their lives every time
you reach into your coat for cigarettes or something. Unless, of course, this is
just how people react to me.

The question, however, is: is this a new development brought on by the erosion
of our culture by decadent Hollywood types determined to undermine our America
in order to introduce their commie perversions? I guess it's easy to watch an
episode of Tales from the Crypt, counting bared breasts, curse-words, and
callous violence and decide that yep, those bastards in Callifornia are
definitely corrupting our children so it'll be easy to cast them in kiddie porn,
or something. Then you watch It's a Wonderful Life or some other Jimmy Stewart
movie and its obvious, isn't it, that while the America of pre-1960's history
was a little less exciting, it was definitely a purer, cleaner, safer (and, to
some people, whiter) America. Wasn't it?

No, you idiots, it wasn't. Violence is not an invention of Martin Scorsese, or
Quentin Tarrantino, it's a fundamental part of human life. Aggressive behavior
towards perceived enemies and brutal defense of perceived territory is as
ancient and natural as the human race is. Sure, you watch the L.A. riots of a
few years ago and it scares the shit out of you, especially when you watch a
bunch of really huge guys beat the living shit out of an innocent trucker just
passing through  -it ought to scare the bejesus out of you, and make you
re-think that Teamster career you've been considering. But Los Angeles in 1992
was not only not the first riot in history, it wasn't even nearly the worst.
There have been riots in the world that left the cities razed. There have been
riots that have unseated governments. Compared to some of the classic uprisings
of urban violence (the fucking French Revolution comes to mind) the L.A. riots
were a peace demonstration. The line between a riot and a revolution is a pretty
thin one, and it's best to remember that.

Violence is always with us, it's just suppressed. It's best to remember that the
process of civilizing a human being from wild animal with high ability to reason
("the best way to club a cow into dinner is a single blow to the brain,
instantly killing it") to tamed housepet that fears incarceration is one of
teaching us that the consequences of unleashing our violence in unapproved ways
are far worse than the joy of following our natural instincts. We have plenty of
organized and safe ways of indulging our violent tendencies: war, sports,
movies, TV, et cetera. These allow us to vent our violence without breaking any
of society's rules  -instead of going out and busting some heads, we can watch
Mike Tyson do it for us. Since Boxing is a sport with rules and organization, we
can fool ourselves that it is a reasonable and therefore civilized endeavor,
instead of the barbaric and primitive human cockfight that it is.

We identify with violence because it's pretty much our most overpowering and
empowering emotional response. We perceive an injustice, and our first reaction
is almost always to get violent. We usually repress that urge, as we've been
taught, and find some other way of expressing it, but it's hard, something that
takes effort, and sometimes our grip slips and something slips out, and
unfortunately in this great country with its loosey-goosey gun-control laws,
that usually means someone has to die. If you're one of those pinko-Americans
who doesn't own some sort of firearm, it usually means that you die, since your
enemy most likely does.

Let's face it, if every perceived injustice incites us to violent urges, we city
folk are reaching for our sidearms constantly. People push past us, or stop in
the middle of the sidewalk for no apparent reason other than a desire to see
what it must be like to be autistic  -BANG! Cabs splash us with water, cars
barely miss hitting you as you cross the street with the light, waiters are rude
because working for $3 an hour plus tips is somehow an underappreciated career 
-KAPOW!  Is it any wonder that every 30 years or so we're smashing windows and
beating up the cops? Not to me, it's not. As a matter of fact, if you start
thinking about how often you experience the urge to commit violence, I find it a
wonderful and reassuring fact that riots and such don't break out much, much
more often.

Back in the mid-1800s, there was thriving business in Indian scalps. Hundreds of
men went into the western territories and murdered thousands of
native-Americans, cutting off their scalps and then getting paid a bounty by the
U.S. government. This is a documented fact  -are we any more violent than that?
At least murder is not official government policy, today. If your concern is the
urban sinkhole you live in, and the constant threat of being kidnapped by roving
rioters and made into their concubine or something (which is closely linked to
my own fear, namely that I might enjoy that immensely) I can trot out my
oft-used and never believed fact that violent crime rates were higher in this
country's metropolis' in the late 19th century than they have ever been in the
late 20th century. I'm sorry, but things just aren't as bad as they seem to be.
There are bad neighborhoods that seem more like war zones, admittedly, but we're
talking neighborhoods, not the whole world. Not even an entire city. When we're
all holed up in armed bunkers shooting anyone we don't recognize, then talk to
me about the rising rates of violence, if you can get me to stop shooting people
long enough to listen, and as long as the sight of me licking blood off my
fingers doesn't disconcert you too much.

The thing is, natch, we're pretty naturally violent, so the occasional bouts of
murder and property damage aren't really all that unusual, and the level of
violence in this country isn't really all that bad. Oh, sure, we murder
oursleves at a disturbing rate, but think of it this way: we're not the middle
east or Northern Ireland, where violence is no longer even uncommon enough to be
remarked upon. They've got little kids throwing molatav cocktails around over
there, friends; get over the fact that our little kids might mug you.

Now we come to the part of the editorial where I really veer off the common
ground and start telling you things you probably won't agree with, and which
might make you want to commit some violence unto me. Forgetting for the moment,
of course, that I would probably enjoy that too much. Here's where I say: that's
the way society works, on one level. Society is what happens when we have
ongoing tension between uncoordinated violence and the forces of order. Think of
it this way: if you removed the possibility of unrestrained violence and
property damage, you also remove the necessity for an organization to combat and
control such outbreaks. We don't need any cops if no one is committing any
crimes, right? I mean, if we could all undergo a procedure that would remove our
violent and anti-social tendencies, guarenteeing that we'd never break the law
or even act in a threatening manner ever again, would we really need police? Of
course not. Our society, our government and enforcement agencies, exist because
you can't trust human beings to just behave themselves, as the New York Blackout
of '77 proves: leave us to our own devices, oinkers, and we'll rob ourselves
blind.

Take away that tension, that struggle between order and chaos, and do you really
think we'd need crossing guards, meter maids, hall monitors, librarians, riot
police, et al? We really wouldn't need a lot of the structures of society if we
could just be trusted to tell you no lies and keep our hands to ourselves.

I take that one step further and say that therefore, without our violent
tendencies, we wouldn't have any civilization at all, and even if we had managed
to survive getting our racial throats ripped out millions of years ago by some
other mammal with balls we'd probably be sitting in zoos right now while Dr.
Cornelius beat the crap out of a shaved monkey that looks an awful lot like
Charlton Heston. It's because we have a nasty tendency to beat each up and steal
each other's graven images that the whole mess we call civilization was begun,
so long ago. It's all a long, interconnected pattern leading from the first time
some bully-ape knocked another ape on his ass and the other apes all decided
that they needed some goddamned order. From that first ripple in the gene pool
so many centuries ago, now comes the world order we have today. If, millions of
years ago our ape ancestors had been content to sit around and eat each others'
fruit or whatever, instead of brazenly stealing someone elses, we'd most likely
still be there, wondering why we didn't evolve like everyone else.

The liberals and closet Alan Alda fans who cringe back from violence and whine
about how western civilization is dangerously close to the edge, well, I'm
afraid that they're the sort of low-tier genetic material that would have been
culled from the ranks through natural selection thousands of years ago. I say
this with complete confidence because it's always the people who cannot defend
themselves in any way who complain about violence. Thousands of years ago, when
it was not only legal but preferable to kill such people, they wouldn't have
made it far past their first tribal brouhaha. Now, I'm no tough-guy, I admit;
but I've had my ass handed me and I still get in the ring every day, and I don't
complain about it. A few black eyes and a scar or two won't haunt me, nor will
they stop me from taking a swing every now and again when it's called for, not
to mention a few beatings. I don't support violence....but I understand.

So: don't get all bent out of shape just because our children are beating up our
grandparents for crack money and the militias are blowing up grammar schools,
it's the way of the world. Without our urge to destroy all that we see, we would
never have invented all the stuff that constitutes civilization: government,
religion, technology, modern brewing techniques. Don't stop the violence, kids.
Just use it better.

Of course, sometimes I watch Entertainment Tonight and wonder if it was really
worth all the effort. Then I usually have a beer and decide that, yeah, it was
all worth it, if only for beer.

And that's how society manages to function despite our apparently undeterred
fascination with killing each other: because it's our undeterred fascination
with killing each other that brought about society in the first place.
Personally, I believe that the moment all the peaceniks and their ilk succeed in
disarming the rest of us (prying my typewriter from my cold, dead hands, of
course) will be the day the aliens swoop in and conquer the planet in a matter
of days, putting us into cages and shipping us back to the home planet for
display, study, and vivisection. Lacking alien invasion, we'd probably just
devolve into happy simps, eventually using laptop computers as blunt
instruments, probably in futile self-defense from the super-evolved roaches that
will rise from the hidden shadows of our abandoned kitchens to take over where
we left off.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
Suck It Up: Welcome to the Wimp Generation 
Tylenol, Tolerance, and Technology: 
Three Reasons the Human Race is Doomed 
by Jeff Somers 
========================================

SCIENTISTS like to joke about how relatively young the human race is. They show
up on shows like NOVA and tell us how old the Ants are (hundreds of millions of
years) and then point out that the earliest example of Homo Sapien (Fig. 1.) is
only a million or so years old. Ha ha ha, the implication is that our survival
curve has yet to be determined, and we may yet become extinct, like in Planet of
the Apes.

I used to argue with that, taking the position that humans will survive forever,
and my reason was one phrase: air conditioning.

Doomsday prognosticators like to bellow on about how we're ruining our
environment and that's how we're going to become extinct: someday we'll make the
air unbreathable or the water unpotable or the temperatures unbearable and we'll
just drop dead. But I doubt that will happen. Oh, we'll ruin our environment,
don't doubt that for a moment. But it won't kill us  -if we make it too hot to
live, we'll just move inside or underground and our air conditioning will keep
us alive. If we ruin the soil we'll just grow mold and eat that. No matter what
environmental disaster you moan about, I guarentee you we'll come up with a
technological solution, so I relax and pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
with something approaching glee.

But now, I'm not so sure about our survival. Oh, I still believe in air
conditioning, I'm just not sure I believe in us. Consider:

ONE: If you pause to consider the sheer amount of luck, struggle, pain, and
discomfort that evolution must have cause mankind, it's a wonder to me that the
people I live and work with are of the same biological material. Millions of
years ago we crawled from the muck and survived endless battles with injury,
disease, predators, and famine to become the dominant creature on this green
earth. Today, however, this same dominant creature collapses into a fetal
position of whining any time it's asked to endure a little pain for the cause 
-and will quickly gobble up any remedy that will postpone or numb the suffering,
while ignoring the common sensical solution to many of our nagging problems:
alter the behavior that causes the discomfort. This same victor of Darwinism
cringes at the thought of dirt or germs  -two things your body is crawling with,
twenty-four hours a day, no matter what you do. That's the curse of the
technological man, I guess: we believe in overcoming nature's warnings instead
of dealing with them.

We are a race of creatures who take pills to stay awake and then take pills to
get to sleep. We eat antacids to stop heartburn instead of simply changing our
diets. We want medicines and therapies for our aching backs instead of just
losing some weight and excercising to strengthen the muscles. We endlessly mute
the natural reactions of our bodies and chemically alter the course of our lives
rather than deal with the simplest of truths: that most pain comes from us doing
something bad to ourselves.

After all, if we find that we can't sleep at night, we don't examine our diet
and behavior and try to see what is affecting us, we'd rather drug ourselves
into a forced sleep and wonder why we still feel like crap. If pizza causes us
heartburn, we don't stop eating pizza, we start taking medications. And then we
wonder why we're dying at a young age, ruined. If we're sleepy we drink coffee,
if we're constipated we take a pill, if we so much as have a headache, we're
popping pills. This is the race that took evolution by the horns and won? Not
bloody likely.

Let's face it, we live in an age of technological wonders. The skill with which
we can manipulate our own bodies is amazing, and valuable. We live longer, and
in greater comfort, than in any other age in history, and my own dim view of the
race aside most people would agree that this is a good thing. After all, if
something really bad happens to you (let's say you are tackled by a rabid Karen
Accavallo during a friendly touch-football game and your knee is reduced to a
bloody sponge by her simmering rage) it's nice to know that medical
professionals will show up soon and administer drugs that will kill the pain and
stop infection. If our insides revolt against us and conspire to kill us, it's
good to know that there are chemicals that can alter that path.

We are taking it too far, however, and have come to this weird place in history
wherein we as a race seem to believe that pain or discomfort or simple dirt is
for suckers. I remember watching all those cheesy sci-fi movies when I was a kid
and noting how ridiculously clean and sanitary the future always was in those
flicks, maybe this is where it starts: a bunch of too affluent freaked-out Fat
Americans complaining that they're afraid they'll contract terminal ass-rot if
they dare to sit on a public toilet.

I suppose the goal of a pain-free existence is a laudable one, in the abstract.
Pain certainly does suck, and when I'm experiencing it in any amount my first
instinct is to get rid of it, and fast. But really, should we eliminate pain? Is
that really smart? I don't think so. Pain, as any high-school Biology teacher
will be glad to tell you, is the body's first line of defense, it's way of
telling you that something is wrong. Take that away and you're monkeying with
the very mechanisms that got our venerable race where it is today, not to
mention ignoring serious alarms your body is sending up, sort of like taking the
batteries out of the fire alarms in your house. It's a little known fact that in
modern times most of the deaths associated with Leprosy (a disease which attacks
the nerves and leaves its victims completely numb in its early stages) stem from
infections and wounds that the lepers incur without knowing it, because they
can't feel pain. After all, chronic pain is probably telling you something. Get
rid of it with a medication and you're taking a big risk.


TWO: Thinking these dim thoughts, I fear for the survival of the species. Right
now we are the undisupted masters of the planet. We cut down and destroy what we
don't want, we create what we do. We've murdered just about every species that
has dared to stand in our way, our zoos are filled with prisoners of war from
the animal wars. But evolution moves in incredibly slow glacial cycles. I'm
afraid that right now some other species is evolving past us whil we stand
still, or even de-volve.

Think about natural selection and how we've bypassed it: used to be that a
genetic defective like me would have a hard time making it to puberty, much less
spawning descendants. I have weak eyesight, I'm athletically inferior, not
overly bright, and am genetically incapable of having a decent haircut. Under
jungle conditions, no self-respecting female of the species in search of genetic
material to mingle with hers would give me half a chance. Ah, but now we have
modern society, which has all sorts of props set up for people like me:
eyeglasses make my eyesight a non-factor in day-to-day survival. I don't have to
hunt and wrestle bears for food, I just have to be able to hold down a job. The
amazing inaccuracy of standardized tests allowed me to get a college degree, so
I was able to get a job that paid decently, so buying food is no problem. I can
provide, even though back in the cave man days I would have been genetic
memories years ago, probably not long after birth.

The result? A weakened race. No longer are only the strong, the smart, and the
special surviving long enough to attract mates and pass their special genetic
material on, even schlubs like me are. And thanks to modern angst and psychosis,
even lesser genes like mine can attract some chick and get themselves passed on
(albiet, not recently). And, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think there are
people out there with genetics inferior even to my weak boys getting lucky out
there, even starting families  -we're diluting the very gene pool that has
gotten us this far and this dominant.

Now, this wouldn't worry me except that I sincerely doubt that the cockroaches,
for example, or the Gazelles of north Africa have computer dating services and
cosmetic surgery. The animals and insects of this grand world are still
reproducing by the make-or-break survival of the fittest method, meaning that
the short, weak, blind, defective or stupid ones usually don't get a chance to
pass those lackings on. Every year, a better generation of roaches emerges from
the walls, eating Raid like candy, while the Larry Kings of the world somehow
manage to mate with seven or eight women each. When the confrontation happens
ten thousand years from now, I have this sinking feeling that we're going to be
the ones getting squashed.

I will say it as plain and simple as I can: some people should not breed. Now, I
would never encourage any concept of "ethnic cleansing" or genetic fascism (not
me, bwana) so I leave it up to the rest of my genetic-loser brethren: follow my
lead and voluntary keep your DNA out of the pool. Stay single, have the tubes
tied, have the common human decency to give the race a little bit of an edge.
Have a full life, enjoy yourself, hell, even get married (why not?), just don't
have kids. It's that simple. You'd be doing the race a tremendous favor, even if
the rest of the stupid bastards don't know it.

Of course, there's really no way, these days, to tell who's weak, genetically,
and who's not. Lou Gehrig, after all, looked like a class-A alpha male until he
suddenly discovered he had low-rent genes in 1937. Nor would I really want to
have that on my file, truth be told, like a high-tech scarlet letter. Because I
don't doubt for a second that if I were scanned for genetic deficencies, I'd set
off all the bells and whistles and probably make the scientists faint right
there in the room. Bad eyes, bad back, no hand-eye coordination to speak of,
theoretical bladder control, yellow teeth, bad memory, low sense of humor, no
pain tolerance, easily winded  -you name it, I'd get mauled by it if you locked
me in a cage with it. If I had to eat puppies to survive, I'd be puppy-chow.

So, I voluntarily remove myself from the reproduction race. I don't want to be
responsible for our eventual defeat at the hands of the roaches, amigos. Of
course, if you accept our eventual evolutionary defeat as an unavoidable fact,
then I guess it's okay to be wimps in the meantime, after all. Oh well.

THREE: Which brings me to my real point: cell phones.

Every dickhead in the universe has one of these things, these days. Or, if not a
cell phone, they have a pager or a beeper or some other bizarre mode of
communication. The fucking phones are ringing at movies, on subways, in the
elevator  -and what strikes me about all the conversations I've witnessed
concerning cell phones and whatnot is that none of them are very consequential.
Bullshit bullshit bullshit. As if we didn't have enough bullshit in our lives,
now its portable. People call to tell their loved ones that they're on their way
home, they call, I firmly believe, just to show everyone around them that they
have whatever little toy they have.

I love the commercials, too, that show all sorts of go-getters getting all sorts
of calls in all sorts of weird places  -in the mountains, on a plane, whatever.
Or the ones which hint that you will get into a car accident, be kidnapped, and
murdered unless you have the means to call for help in your pocket. Once again
we are being handed a brand new innovation as a necessity of life  -since when?
To paraphrase another writer, I've been driving without a phone since I was
sixteen, and I've managed to live so far.

We're all so willing to believe that we can't live without something we've lived
without for thousands of years, it's pathetic. Take the aforementioned invention
of air conditioning: there was a time, my frightened little piglets, when there
was no such thing. You know what people did back then? They sweated. They  -get
this- got out of the house. They went outside and sweated, and for the most part
they didn't burst into flames or die of perspiration. There was also a time when
we didn't have cell phones, when we didn't have call waiting or caller I'd and
you had to sort of take your chances.

And maybe I'm just an old fuddy, but I kind of like it better the way it was. I
don't like air conditioning. And while I'm a big fan of call waiting because I
have what might be referred to as an obsession with getting messages, I don't
like the idea that people may soon be able to call me in my car, or, say, in the
bathroom. This world is getting smaller and smaller, and I for one think we need
as much distance as we can get in these cramped times. I think our lack of
tolerance is wearing down our ability to survive, until, eventually, we're all
fleeing the roaches, screeching to each other for help over our cell phones,
tapping "911" into our pagers frantically. Or, maybe not.

So there you have it: the state of the race this evening. We're on our way to
eventual destruction with our cell phones in one hand and our slothful genes in
the other, and the slippery slope starts here, baby, at the top of our game. And
I for one will not be surprised.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
THE STINK OF WASTED BACHELORHOOD 
I have seen the future and it is Larry from "Three's Company." 
by Jeff Somers
========================================

WITH the ruins of my youth behind me, I have noted amongst my friends a
dangerous proclivity towards couplehood. In the immediate, this only changes my
social life in that I find myself pretending to like people I don't really like
much more often, pretty much every time an until-that-moment sane friend of mine
introduces his/her new beau and I find myself staring down the dark maw of The
Weird. Also, I find myself acutely jealous of people who are not sleeping alone,
to the point where I snap viciously at innocent acquaintances, who cannot
understand a word I say because I'm also chewing ice almost constantly. But
aside from these mundane annoyances, I can't say that this creeping coupling is
really affecting my life in the adverse right now. The hardest part is probably
tracking people down; men and women who used to spend all their free time
sitting on their couches are now out all the time, or, apparently, having sex,
which usually means they don't answer the phone.

Ah, but there is the future to contemplate. I'd like to wallow in the present
and live free or die, but time stops for no man and my ever-expanding waistline
compels me to consider my fate. And my fate is, very simply, to be Everybody's
Weird Bachelor Friend.

The thin line between being a simple wasted bachelor and being a weird old man
whom no one ever wanted is a blurry one, and comes upon you with a blinding 
sort of speed  -you go to sleep swinging bachelor number one, you wake up
potential homosexual/pedophile/weird bachelor friend no one knows how to invite
to weddings. Or if they want to. I'm hurtling towards this transformation with
every passing moment, because everyone I know is moving inexorably towards
couplehood and the trappings thereof. Gone are late nights out at bars, in are
late night feedings. Gone are drunken flirtations up against the jukebox, in are
cynical matchmaking discussions about your aging bachelor friend. Gone are late
shows at clubs, in are holidays spent with the family. And before I know it I'm
the only one getting a ticket for public urination  -and no one's impressed
anymore. Ah, the sweet, fleeting bird of youth.

What it boils down to is, I've lost my cover. All wild animals require
camaflouge at certain moments in their lives, to ensure our survival. Wasted
Bachelors thrive when surrounded by others of their ilk, but in a pinch any
group of singles, happy or otherwise, will do. We need to blend in. Take away
our cover and we shrivel and wilt, much like the Buffalo of our great nation's
midwest. We either waste away or are hunted down by the one great predator we
fear: spinsters. Wasting away, while by far the preferable fate, has a dark
side; in fact, it is pretty much all dark side. Consider these awful side
effects of being an aging wasted bachelor:

1. Victimization by fashion: the problem with men is they have no concept of
clothing. If they do, they're usually homosexual. I have nothing bad to say
about being homosexual, but being single at age fifty because you're gay is a
little different from being a Wasted Bachelor, you know? When we're young we
either make anything look good or we're tuned into the culture just enough to
know that plaid bell bottoms were a government conspiracy. As we age, however,
we lose touch with the cultural barometers that have kept us on the sane path to
khakis and we definitely lose the ability to make tie-dye look cool. Set adrift
on the pret-a-porter sea of torment, we suffer.

Most men, by this time, have by way of self-defense taken on a wife or at the
very least one of those eternally suffering long-term girlfriends for the sole
and noble purpose of making sure they're dressed appropriately. One of the
reason married men are so attractive to other women, I'm convinced, is the
simple fact that there's someone at home picking out their clothes for them. The
rest of us wander around looking unkempt and vaguely out of date. We've got no
chance.

And, as we bachelors age it gets worse, until our increasingly desperate
attempts to clothe ourselves eventually result in terminal clashing,
unrestrained use of polyester, and eventual....death.

2. Extinction of rent-a-dates. I personally believe that at least 75% of
anyone's decision to "settle down" with one significan't other has to do with the
natural human aversion to having to attend social functions alone. At the heart
of romance, I think, is the concept of the permanent date.

Wasted Bachelors abuse this system of freewheeling socializing. We like to go to
big events like weddings, funerals, or the Superbowl, dragging along some
platonic (or otherwise) friend. We have someone to talk to all night, someone to
dance with, someone to make unwanted sexual overtures to, and in the end we
don't have to call them the next day or worry about remembering their name. In
other words, we don't have to live with them after their usefulness as a social
companion is over.

And hell, if those unwanted sexual overtures turn out to be wanted, after a
mixture of romantic 80's tunes, tequila fanny-bangers, and your own well-worn
but effective nonetheless charm  -it's okay. The rent-a-date is usually a friend
and that guarantees the uncomfortable jesus I've never been quite so drunk
conversation the next morning, wherein the Wasted Bachelor is absolved of guilt,
free to go dig into future buffets with other unsuspecting rent-a-dates.

As everyone scrambles for the safety of couplehood, however, rent-a-date
possibilities dry up, leaving the Wasted Bachelor dangerously exposed. Almost
any women he might actually consider stimulating conversation is snapped up at
an early age, leaving behind dangerously uninteresting and unattractive
alternatives. Many Wasted Bachelors willingly become hermits when faced with
this cruel turn of nature.

3. Match-Making. Nothing can make a species wither and run for the cool comfort
of extinction like women looking to bring the world the happiness they have
found in couplehood. Everyone claims to dislike the practice, no one will openly
admit to it, but the subtle tendrils of match-making can be traced back to
someone in your social group, after all. The real masters of the art, the Queen
Mothers of match-making, can do it with a series of long-range subtle
suggestions you likely wouldn't even recognize as such. They create longing with
a phrase, desire with an observation, and flee the scene before anyone can trace
the machinations back to them.

Of course, any match-making you experience as a young and swinging member of
your little group is nothing compared to the torrent of romance-peddling the
aging Wasted Bachelor will endure in his brief, agonizing existence. After all,
they're wasted bachelors: wasted time, wasted energy, wasted money. Time,
energy, and money that could be going to a deserving spinster  -and as you get
older, time is running out to take advantage of your natural resources. Every
time you step out into the sunlight, you'll be bombarded with friends, cousins,
sisters, twice-divorced black widows and various unattached women. Eventually,
all Wasted Bachelors are taught to fear the outisde world, and end up hiding out
in the darkened gloom of their apartments, waiting to die.

As Colonel Ripper said in Dr. Strangelove, "I don't avoid women...but I do deny
them my essence."

Now, I know that the many women friends I count myself lucky to have are even
now measuring out rope to lynch me, because they all think I'm referring to them
when I use the word spinster. But Wasted Bachelors are much worse off than aging
Spinsters, since Spinsters can at least begin purchasing cats for companionship
and seem to slip effortlessly into a Grandmotherly middle-age of peace, calmly
finding new life after sex. Wasted Bachelors, however, are never quite left
alone. Even as dottards we're valuable, as long as we can stand up without
assistance long enough to mumble something that can be interpreted as "I do."
Until we die, we're marriage fodder, bwana.

4. Having anonymous sex with multiple partners for the rest of your life. Oops 
-sorry, this isn't a drawback.

Remaining a bachelor becomes more risky as the years go by. Not only are we
forced to run the gauntlet of matchmaking every day, but we also have to risk
the possibility that settling down isn't so bad and that maybe we are going to
end up like Grandpa Simpson, alone in the home, being ignored by everyone,
simply because we never spawned. The concept of a legacy is a seductive one to
us humans, who are terrified by our own mortality and seek to live forever
through our progeny. That's all well and good if your legacy is Microsoft or
some other incredible body of work. It doesn't work so well if your legacy is a
unique talent at unhooking bra straps and the legendary ability to look
dignified in leopard-skin speedos, or perhaps being able to proudly say that "it
takes more than a fifth of Early Times to make me pass out, baby!" In short, Men
who pursue the rocky road of Wasted Bachelorhood maybe ought to remain
childless, for the good of the future, which promises to be a lot less fun, and
thusly less tolerant of us.

Thus, it occurs to me that we men who pursue Wasted Bachelorhood are really
heroes for our times, eh? We do not scurry for the warm refuge of couplehood, we
do not cower under the umbrella of a healthy and supportive relationship. We do
not flee from the forces of darkness  -we are the forces of darkness, and after
all what could be more 90's than the forces of darkness? I'm proud to be one of
the lieutenants in the dark army, marching across the dance floors of the world
with a stuff drink in one hand and a dogeared copy of 1001 Great Pickup Lines in
the other. If you think about it, we're the great Anarchists of our times, since
one of the main engines of society has always been the drive towards the nuclear
family. Resisting that drive is to embrace the dark side of freedom, baby, and
plant your flag firmly in the pungent topsoil of revolution.

Don't believe that grown men exercising the libidos of thriteen-year-olds can be
heroes? Obviously you've never had to scramble for a wedding date or endure the
pitying stares of friends and co-workers, especially on those days when you show
up at work hungover on a Monday wearing the same clothes you had on before the
weekend started, or when you get tossed out of a wedding for propositioning the
bride in the mistaken belief that your lifelong desire to write an original
Forum letter is a noble one, a goal that any American would want to help out
with. That, in my opinion, is the definition of an honest mistake, and I wish my
family would stop bringing it up whenever I attend family functions.

Screw it. Heroes aren't always recognized in their lifetimes (look at Dean
Martin, whose tremendous contribution to this cause are only now slowly being
revealed) and I'm content to know that when Armageddon comes our way I'll be in
Satan's Singles Bar, juggling cocktails and chasing skirts. Or, possibly,
kneeling at God's feet begging for salvation, depending on how things go.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
OUR NEW YEARS ARTICLE 
Im too bored to think of a better title
By Jeff Somers
========================================

So, its 1998 already and I am shocked. Shocked at how fast 1997 went by, shocked
at all the stuff that happened in 1997, and shocked - no, OUTRAGED!  -at the
limp rate of shrinkage my bar debts have experienced. And mildly irritated at
the turns my Zine life has experienced lately. I didn't get into this zine thing
in order to meet like-minded people who agree with my opinions, but thats what I
find. God-damn it, every time someone writes me telling me how much they agree
with what I've written, I struggle with this dark angel of despair that rises up
within me and urges me to blow my brains out. I used to have this illusion that
I had some pretty idiosyncratic and distinctive opinions, I now know thats
bullshit: every single thought I've ever had has been shared by about seven
hundred other people at the minimum. This sucks. This sucks because every time
some moron from the heartland tells me how cool I am, I start to wonder what,
exactly, their definition of cool is, and why I fit into it. If you don't think
this sucks, take this Inner Swine test: Go to a public place and sit down for
about an hour, then turn to the nearest person and try to imagine what they
think is cool. Then imagine you're it. If its a pleasant sensation, you really
shouldnt be reading this goddamned magazine.

Usually, I only have three basic concepts for articles: a) complaining about
people, b) complaining about stuff, c) making up ridiculous stuff about people.
Thats why I get excited for issue #3 every year, because it gives me this
automatic article to write, wherein I contemplate the year past as only I can,
and bore you for a few pages with lists and my typically urbane and reasonable
spit-peppered shouting matches with myself. Its a relief to have a guarenteed
few pages, so I don't have to think too much.

Ah, but the creeping ennui is a devious affliction, pigs, and I grow bored even
with this unnoticed and uncelebrated tradition here at The Inner Swine. I just
can't bring myself to write another list of ten things I hate  -besides, I write
so many of those in fevered little midnight sweatings that I have shoeboxes
filled with such lists, as well as lists of people I'll have killed when I have
the power and what Im going to rename all the cities of the world when I rule it
a few years from now as Augustus Redeux (which I've decided will be my new name
once Im reborn as ruler of the universe). I can't show you those lists, of
course; besides frightening you away, there are court orders to consider and 
-heh heh- my enemies to worry about. But there has to be a new years article, of
course, if I put this issue out without one my three loyal readers will be upset
and protest (in other words, Misty Sue Quinn will get drunk and kick my ass from
here to Broadway), so I have to come up with something.

So, I was sitting around watching television and reading Entertainment Magazine
from friday afternoon until monday morning, eating Ho-Hos and drinking Pepsi,
vomiting, the usual, and I realized that I've been barking up the wrong tree all
these years. My little rants don't define this world; hell, no one even reads
them. What does define the world? Thats right, kids: advertising.

DISTURBING ADVERTISING IN 1997:

WE're all inundated with advertising every moment of our fat american lives, you
know. The writer David Foster Wallace predicts that in the near future the years
will be subsidized, so that instead of the year 2003, for example, we will have
The Year of The Depend Adult Undergarment, or The Year of The Tucks Medicated
Pad, and the wonder of that bit of fiction is that its really not so hard to
imagine. Corporations are merging into one big entity much like "The Company" in
those creepy Alien movies, and they seem prepared to subsidize everything. We're
not quite there yet, but you can't be conscious in this country without being
bombarded by ads for everything.

Like most people who consider themselves smart (correct or not) I've been able
to ignore most of this crap. I read books during TV commercials, I cut through
inserts in the newspapers with surgical precision, I switch stations during the
breaks on the radio. But this year I've been finding it harder and harder to
ignore it all. It's creeping in, like a fungus, a little at a time as the light
gets dimmer.

Why? Because there have been several scary developments in advertising recently,
and I think my subconscious is silently screaming about it. Either that or those
subliminals are finally working, and I'm getting up at 2AM to sleepwalk to the
mall to purchase things. I'd prefer to believe the former, thank you. Of course,
some of you may be thinking, Jesus, Jeff, what DOESN'T disturb you, you paranoid
walking conspiracy theorist. You would think that, wouldn't you? What you have
to understand, though, is that fundamentally I have no problem with advertising.
Really! They're pigs, just like me, and I can respect that. Besides, the yokels
who fall for their soft-sell bullshit are mostly morons, anyway, so let them
waste their money  -no skin off my nose. If the advertisers do discover the
secret of mind control, I hope they remember that I'm a friend and can be
trusted with the secrets of their shadowy cabal. I certainly wouldn't stop them.

But there have been disturbing developments:

1. A lack of purpose. Used to be that commercials tried to sell you things,
unless it was a PSA, in which case it was dedicated to making your kids' lives
much more boring than yours had been. When Ford created a commercial for a car,
it was trying to convince you to buy a car. When Red Lobster advertised the
Belly-Buster Special, it was trying to sell you some overpriced dinners. Simple.
They might dress it up with song and dance, humor and special effects, but at
the core of it they were just trying to part some fools from their money, and I
say: more power to them!

Nowadays, however, commercials seem to exist largely just to give advertising
people a reason to go to work. Commercials don't sell anymore  -sometimes they
don't even mention a product! Look at the recent Levi's commercials featuring
that stuffed maroon dinosaur (if you've seen it; if not, I can't help you. And
don't try and tell me you don't watch TV! You arrogant pricks who don't watch TV
are kidding yourselves. See the tiny article on Page xx for more on this
subject): this commercial shows us no jeans, informs us of no reason to purchase
Levi's over other brands, and basically jerks us around with a lot of wasted
time with bullshit celebrity appearances and mangled hipster-doofus-slacker
"stories". They can be funny, actually. The point, however, escapes me  -except
that I realize they aren't really selling actual jeans here, they're selling the
Levi's "concept", or identity. In short, you know nothing about their jeans, but
when you see them in the store you'll remember the atmosphere of the
commericals, the actors in them, the music; if that lifestyle and attitude
appeals to you, hopefully you'll purchase a small part of it in the form of
Levi's jeans. You might be amazed at how well this tactic seems to work. Or not.

Even worse than these ads, which at least attempt to identify a brand name to
the buying public (if not that brand's actual products), are advertisements for
institutions that don't sell anything. Advertising has become a quick way to
inject a presence into the group consciousness, a way of establishing a
philosophy and image without having anything to back it up. Corporations have
realized that if you get yourself some cool cache and a hot image, people will
buy your crap like the lemmings they are. Perception is reality, pigs. So, for a
while now Calvin Klein has been spitting out these interchangeable commercials
in black and white in which pretty white people, looking fairly rich and fit,
cavort in beautiful landscapes. At the end of the commercial someone does
whisper the name of the cologne or clothing line that's being sold, but what's
really being excreted into our atmosphere is an image, one that Calvin hopes we
take home with us, and remember on some level the next time we go shopping
because we're depressed about our dead-end lives, miserable little shits that we
are.

2. Car Companies' Cynical exploitation of our combined idiocy. This is, I admit,
nothing new, but in my eyes it's reached a frightening and shocking level of
contempt. Sure, forty years ago the television cigarette ads basically told you
that you'd be suave, debonair, and having sex within moments of lighting up 
-that's the oldest ad trick in the book, right? Nowadays, though, they've gone
beyond tugging at the loose threads of our insecurities. They've gone deeper
than threatening our self-image  -they're threatening our family members and
loved ones.

A few years ago a book was published called Buy This Book Or We'll Shoot This
Dog. The book had a picture of an awfully cute puppy on the cover. It was
humorous, but it's basically what a lot of advertisements are telling us these
days, except instead of a cute dog they're hinting that all sorts of horrible
things will happen to you, your family, your best friends, and your dog if you
don't make the right consumer choices. Car companies are having a field day with
this one. Capitalizing on the increasing fear of a Black Planet the insulated
suburbanites carry around like a guilty weight, every other car commercial
stresses how impossible it is for this new car to break down, to lose control in
the rain, to be stolen (the other car commercials still tease us with
0-to-orgasm alpha male fantasies on closed roads with professional drivers). One
of my favorites is a Ford commercial which depicts a middle-aged woman driving
home to her waiting family. The old song "Stand by Me" plays in the background.
It's raining, and her family is getting a little worried (we know this 'cause
they keep going to the windows to check for her), and as she's driving she looks
a little worried herself. But no fear! She's driving a fucking-A Ford! She
passes poor souls broken down on the shoulders (because they weren't driving
Fords) and avoids accidents (with morons who were too stupid to purchase Fords)
due to her car's special Non-Accident Suspension and Steering Systems. The
message? It's a dangerous world, and if you don't pay through the nose for our
car, you'll end up dead by the side of the road.

Another car commercial that makes me wonder are the ones which extol the virtues
of those satellite devices that will help you find your way if you get lost.
This is ideal for terrified soft-rich types who believe that the moment they
leave their gated communities they're in danger, because now they can avoid
dangerous contact with their fellow humans entirely. Lost? No more putting your
life at stake by asking directions, just conatct our SATELLITE TRACKING SYSTEM
and we'll get you where you're going. Asking Cooter at the local gas station is
no longer an option, apparently. I know that my stupid fellow Americans all
believe that criminals hide everywhere, and are always waiting to slit your
throat for a lousy couple of dollars, but now advertising is actually supporting
that affliction, massaging those fears and giving them credence. Am I the only
one that feels cold?

3. The Freaks.  Our national identity is seriously fucked up when the fat white
men who run this world continually put B-boys and heroin-addict lookalikes in
their commercials to sell us items. Levis, McDonalds, Modell's  -you name it and
there are a bunch of skateboard shitheads in fat pants and pierced everythings
dancing around to techno beats, shilling it to us. The best are the Pepsi
Generation Next advertisements that seem to imply that the majority is really a
bunch of sexually undecided drag queens in variously garish costumes dancing
their lives away, fueled, no doubt, by a Pepsi overdose. Living their lives in a
never-ending nightmare of caffeine dependency, these idiots mug for the camera
with almost criminal insincerity  -yet there had to be some lame poll that told
the brain trusts of Madison Avenue that this would sell.

What we have here is this implicit message that if you don't find these
fashions, sounds, opinions, and haircuts cool, then  you are hopelessly out of
touch and might as well move to Florida, to await your death in peace. Maybe
this works on your average fourteen-year-old. When I was fourteen I was too
concerned with getting stoned and masturbating to worry too much about having
the right haircut (Actually, since I was pretty much a typical heavy-metal
freak, we didn't cut our hair very often). It used to be that commercials would
address themselves to whatever segment of the population the advertisers thought
was their target, which was why beer commercials had the Swedish Bikini Team in
them. Nowadays, I don't think they're trying to sell anything to anyone in
particular; they are just trying to get a "buzz" going, by any means necessary.
There is no audience  -the theory is, I think, that if you get your name out
there in big enough portions, when it comes time to make a purchasing decision,
the name will just pop up. So when Levis puts out these freak-circus commercials
with Lenny Kravitz and all those club-kids in cut off shirts and weird haircuts,
they're not targeting a certain segment of the youth market, they're just making
sure that when a 45-year old truck driver is in Sears, those Levis commercials
pop into his brain and he thinks "Levis" whenever he means "denim pants".

It's all about buzz, these days. This brings me to my usual lament at this point
of the year: The Freaks are Winning.

4. Dick. I don't really have to explain this one, I hope. That one guy with the
creepy smile in those football commercials just gives me the heebie-jeebies with
his I-Was-Abused-As-A-Child smile.

5. ABC and NBC, just about any promo. It's fun to watch the broadcast networks
get desperate and sweaty as their audience dries up, especially since they seem
to have decided that the answer to their woes is more advertising, instead of
better shows.  In 1997 I heard more about Must-See-TV than I think any sentient
being should. The very idea is ludicrous; TV is fun and distracting and when I'm
tired and bored and depressed I gorge myself on Baywatch reruns just like every
other man in the world. But you know what? I've never felt like I must watch TV.
Never. Not once. Not when M*A*S*H ended. Not when Ellen came out. Not when JR
got shot, or Murphy Brown knocked up, not when the embassy got taken over in
Iran, not when Waco went up in flames, not even when I was ten years old and
fascinated by the skintight lycra jumpsuit Erin Grey wore on Buck Rogers with
Gil Gerard.

What really disturbs me about this, though, is the idea that somewhere, in
little holes across the country where they scratch at their bedsores with foul,
mishapen hands, there are people who really feel like they must watch TV. I'm
not talking about my girl friends who suction themselves to a couch when Party
of Five comes on; most of them, I'm pretty sure, would miss an episode if, say,
their lives were endangered. Possibly even if my life were endangered, but then
that's always a crapshoot. Not having anything better to do on wednesday nights
is not exactly must-see TV, after all. Who does have anything to do on wednesday
nights? Personally, I think we ought to just get rid of wednesday and invent a
whole new day. We could call it The Holy Day of Jeff, or something.

Ahem....I seem to have wandered off the point somewhat. Anyone wishing to
discuss my movement to re-invent wednesdays as The Holy Day of Jeff can drop me
a line at their own expense.

To compound this television-as-savior thing, we have ABC with their
cleverer-than-thou "yellow" campaign. You know, "TV is Good", "8 Hours a day,
that's all we ask" and other such gems. On the surface, maybe this is
refreshingly honest to you and you find humor in such tragic lack of effort. Me,
I see yet another missing brick from our cultural foundation. We're basically
too tired to kid ourselves, apparently, and ABC can't even get up the energy to
pretend it believes in its programming's value and quality. What the ABC
campaign is saying, basically, is: we suck, watch us anyway, because it's
wednesday and you have nothing else to do.

Wednesday again....perhaps we should make wednesday part of the weekend, a third
weekend day right in the middle of the week! Then, on tuesdays, we could hang up
our shingles and go out, get drunk, stumble home, and sleep until noon. But what
would make it different from the rest of my wednesdays is, I wouldn't get into
serious disciplinary trouble, because I wouldn't have to go to work on
wednesday.

On second thought, I'm sticking with my campaign for The Holy Day of Jeff.

6. Camel cigarettes. Ah, the bluenosed assholes have really saved our skins this
time! They rallied their forces and brought hellfire down unto the earth and
have conquered the mighty hordes of...cartoon Joe Camel? Jesus Fucking Christ.
Nothing is going to stop kids from smoking cigarettes, not while I'm here to
give away packs of the cancer sticks to every hooligan I come across. No, Joe
Camel wasn't doing any harm, but now he's gone, and what do we have in his
place? The "What You're Looking For" campaign for Camels. These print ads are
pretty much smut come-ons for we bigger kids: men. Men are pretty much the same
at thirty as they were when fifteen, except slightly pudgier and possibly more
dim-witted (although final scientific proof of this is always elusive). Joe
Camel appealed to grown men more than it did to kids. Now that they can't use
cartoons to entice us to smoke, kids, they're forced to play the only other card
in their advertising hand: sex. Cheap sex, too, because it's the cigarettes that
are expensive, these days, thanks to increasing federal taxes put upon us by the
bastard politicians who will be the first against the wall when my Wednesday
revolution comes to town, raising me up to my rightful place on a tide of
blood...excuse me.

In these ads, we have sweaty, garishly made-up women smoking cigarettes,
drinking booze, wearing clothes you'd have to peel off the floor of a Dark
Brothers set. They're usually looking into the camera, but the shot is an
extreme close-up, so it's like they're just staring at you from the magazine, a
smoldering, come-hither gaze from a floozie who looks like she hangs out in bars
every night, even wednesday nights, and usually ends up home with some stud.
Some stud who smokes Camels, because, as the ad copy tells you, that's "what
you're looking for." This is somehow less odious than Joe Camel? What, are you
people on dope?

Soon, they'll come to install those neato wall-sized televisions that never turn
off in our homes, and I'll be recruited into the new fire department that burns
down libraries  -until that glorious day, this is all just preparation. Another
year to contemplate our sins and rectify our mistakes, if possible: don't waste
it. I certainly will, and we don't need two idiots wasting the whole year, now
do we. The line between advertising and programming is getting a little blurry,
and pretty soon I'm sure we'll be seeing Michael J. Fox starring in the
hilarious NBC sitcom, My New Hyundai. Episode three: Michael discovers the true
meaning of a 50,000 mile warrantee.

So, I guess I'm saying: stay alert. Pay attention. It's easy to waste another
year just absorbing entertainment, buying stuff, getting stoned just to be able
to eat seventy-five Snickers bars in an hour  -hey, it helps to have goals-  and
wasting epic levels of energy on bitter romance and that purgatorial septic tank
we call your job. Does any of it matter? No. The sooner you realize the
pointlessness of your existence the sooner we can get on with the real work.
What that real work is I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure it has nothing to do
with your job.

Pay attention. If it feels like time is speeding by, you're probably just not
paying attention. Or else you're stuck in some sort of temporal anomaly, like on
Star Trek.

======================================== 
Another Tiny Article 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

People who believe that by not watching television they are somehow smarter or
more perceptive are just kidding themselves, really. I get amused when they
start telling me how they only watch opera on PBS once a month when they're
feeling naughty, or only C-Span in election years (shudder).

Why does this amuse me? Because it's all a waste of time. Party of Five, PBS,
C-Span  -all of it. Books, movies, poetry, art  -all of it. Unless you are
creating it, it's a waste of time. Television is no more or less a waste than
Shakespeare or Fitzgerald or Bottacelli  -anything consumed is a waste of your
time. If you'd rather curl up and read Dante than watch a baseball game or Jenny
McCarthy, it doesn't mean you're using your time necessarily better. It just
means you prefer one waste over another. So get off your high horses and quit
looking down your noses. Some day you will die and all the books you read will
evaporate into worm food, mixed rather democratically with someone elses
Gilligan's Island reruns. Bon appetite!

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY *** 
American Wedding Confidential #3: 
It's a Family Affair 
========================================

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of articles about that peculiar
western tradition, the wedding. All the names have been changed to avoid having
to speak to my family.

THE hardest part about attending my cousins wedding was finding a suitable fake
name for her so I could eventually write about the event. Being from your
prototypical irish-catholic family, I have several thousand cousins, not to
mention hundreds other less-defined relations, plus the weird hangers-on who
arent even related to me but who are always at these family functions. Finding a
name that no other member of my clan was currently using, so as to avoid the
usual libel threats my family throws at me on a daily basis, was the most
difficult and research-intensive task I've had to perform recently. After months
of deep thought and careful searching through the bars and taverns of the
tri-state area (the best source of irish-catholic wisdom in the country) I've
come up with a winner: I'll call my cousin Smilla. I do happen to have a
three-month old second-cousin Smilla, but she's too young to have been the
subject of this essay, so its okay.

I asked my gorgeous friend Elizabeth to be my date at this event, which was
partly due to the deep and abiding friendship we have developed over the years
and partly due to the fact that Elizabeth can cause car wrecks when wearing
certain dresses. Attending family weddings is like going to a high school
reunion for me: its a bunch of people I haven't seen in a while who are dying to
dig into the steaming pile of gossip I represent. Naturally, you want to make a
big impression in these situations, and Elizabeth also kept everyones eyes off
me and my sadly neglected physique. Little did I know that the evening would be
a slow, tortuous dance of humiliations.

Elizabeth drove us to the combination chapel and reception hall somewhere in the
uncharted wilderness of New Jerseys strip mall hell, and we arrived in time to
glad hand a few Aunts and Uncles (some of whom attempted to glad-hand Elizabeth,
causing a few early shouting matches) and take our seats to watch the ceremony.
Smilla was marrying a jewish man who looked vaguely italian and so the ceremony
was a mix of catholic and jewish. Having been to a few weddings, I can tell you
now that both sides of that coin are equally boring. Elizabeth slipped a
stiletto heel off of her graceful foot to jab me in the side with every time my
snoring threatened to become an embarrassment.

When the wedding huddle broke up, we had some time to wander the halls during
the cocktail hour while they readied the reception hall. We found ourselves
trapped, along with my Mother and Brother, with the craziest of my Crazy Uncles,
who relaxed in a plush chair with a scotch on the rocks telling us about Jesus,
who apparently spoke to him on an almost constant basis. Every time my Crazy
Uncles eyes fell on me, I was afraid he was going to denounce me as a witch. At
the first break in my Crazy Uncles nearly-seamless soliloquy I grabbed Elizabeth
and demanded that we go outside for a cigarette. My Brother, no fool, tagged
along despite the fact that cigarettes make him turn green.

Humiliation #1: Freed from insane relatives, the three of us prowled the
corridors curiously and were having such an enjoyable conversation that we were
late getting to the reception hall. The Wedding Party was gathered at the doors,
ready to make their big entrance, and Smilla spied the three of us waiting
politely to sneak in after them. My cousin insisted we sneak in before the
wedding party, and we burst into the room amidst cheers and music meant for the
bride and groom. I stopped to grin and wave like a superstar, until Elizabeth
manhandled me to a nearby table, which, I must admit, I kind of enjoyed.
Humiliation #2: The table we'd found ourselves sitting at wasn't the table we
were supposed to be sitting at, but rather one of the kids' tables. It was
Elizabeth, me, and several ten-year-olds who were rather belligerent towards us.
Often I had to use violence to defend myself.  The fact that several of my aunts
and uncles no longer speak to me can be directly traced to my actions, words,
and attitudes at this table. Humiliation #3:  After the pandemonium had settled
down a little, I went to the bar for a much-needed stiff drink, whereupon I was
promptly carded. At my own cousin's wedding. I have always been cursed with a
cherubic and innocent face, which is why I get away with copping free drinks and
cheap feels from my friends on a constant basis, but this was too much. I took
our drinks, grabbed Elizabeth, and once again demanded we go out for a
cigarette.

When we returned from prowling the halls once again, my family in general had
boozed itself into a frenzy, with fights, romances, and general silliness
breaking out all around us in record numbers. The groom, well-oiled with liquor
through the evening, was hoisted up on a chair along with his bride and a
handkercheif for what appeared to be some sort of traditional religious
nonsense, and promptly fell off the chair. They hoisted him up again, and he
fell off again, killing several people. One of my uncles is a cop, though, so it
was all made right in the end.

Finally, Elizabeth's friendship had been strained enough and we made our way
through the EMS workers, police, and wounded to say good night to the bride and
groom. The bride eyed us with the traditional catholic-matron marriage eye and
thanked me for coming, the groom thought my name was Steve and seemed to be
still standing only because he was too drunk to fall down.

In the car, with the wind screaming past us and Elizabeth's perfume in the car,
I pondered the horror of the family wedding and decided that it was definitely
better to be a rent-a-date than the relation. As a rent-a-date I can get really
drunk and make a pig of myself at both the buffet and the bridesmaids receiving
line, and my mother never has to hear about it.

(Watch for future installments of this award-winning series of investigative
pieces in coming issues of The Inner Swine.)

========================================
*** OBITUARY *** 
Personality Goes a Long Way 
by Jeff Somers
========================================

"If you take away my car you might as well cut my legs off."   - Jack Gillis,
"Sunset Boulevard"

Back in 1992 I bought a 1978 Chevrolet Nova Four-Door, baby blue, from my friend
and confidant Jeof Vita for the thrifty price of $1.00 and a promise to use it
to deliver fast food chicken wings for at least six months.  Jeof, of course,
thought he was unloading a burdensome white elephant on his beloved roommate,
but the car turned out to be an uber-auto, a near-perfect fusion of old-style
Detroit steel, rust, and something that nearly every car manufactured after 1980
lacks: personality.

That car, of course, was the legendary Laverne, the car that has loomed large in
my life story ever since; It was Laverne that drove me out to South Dakota and
back in a few short weeks in 1994, Laverne that transported me to Rose Ann's
wedding, Laverne which saved my life (and the world) by foiling the evil plans
of Ken West during the International Crisis of 1995 you heard so much about. It
was also Laverne who blew her carburetor through the hood one dark night on
route 78 coming home from Lauren's house in 1996, in an explosion that not only
blinded me for several hours but also acted as a flare, bringing emergency
workers from miles and miles away to my aid, but that's a different subject
altogether.

And, sadly, in May 1997 it was Laverne I sold to a junkyard for $40 in American
currency.

As my brother skidded out of the junkyard, almost losing control of the boat on
wheels he claims is a car because he was swatting at imaginary insects as he
drove, I stared glumly out the back window at her shining in the spring sunshine
and thought, Jesus Christ, I just put new tires and shocks on her.

Compared to the bubble cars of today's sadly dulled world, Laverne was a summit
of style. She had the three greatest attributes Detroit used to imbue its cars
with: 1. she had distinctive lines, which even if you didn't find attractive you
could not deny were cool, 2. she shook and roared and just about drooled when
you hit the gas  -man, you knew you were operating heavy machinary when you
drove her, and 3. You could often fix Laverne with a wrench, some duct tape, and
a willingness to get dirty. For the past year I'd been starting Laverne by
jamming a crescent wrench into the carb, opening the gas line all the way, and
cursing.

These days, our little import boxes and fiberglass-mobiles float along like
Jetsons cars, which I do not think of as a good thing. They have all the
personality of a cardboard box. You open the hood and you are greeted with an
insulated box, which is basically a computer and some sort of thermonuclear
device no one outside of secret government labs understands. These cars are
being made by people who can't build a decent stereo no matter how hard they try
-which proves that they are either communists or fundamentalist christians,
which are the two groups of people, to my knowledge, that cannot appreciate a
good stereo system.  These cars are being excreted from the minds of people who
think that the next great step in American freedom will be self-driving cars.
Good evening, Mr. Orwell, thank goodness you could make it at this late hour.

Of course, Laverne is dead and I must move on. If I had millions of dollars I
would rebuild her from the tires up and screw any of you who thought it was
weird. Alas, your Editor here finds himself in monetary disarray, so I had to
buy a loathsome Toyota Camry. It putts when you drive it, and I keep looking for
the key to wind it up with. Worse than anything, however, is the fact that the
previous owner allowed Toyota to install the stereo. Toyota. My god, are there
people like this in the world? My faith shaken, I have summoned my courage and
named my new car Shirley. I'm hoping to drive her into the ground and hopefully
bang some goddamn personality into her by the end, so when she blows a rod
through the hood one night on route 78 coming home from Lauren's house I'll feel
like she's earned a rest.

But before I surrender completely to the innocuous box-car world of modern life,
I have to say: Laverne was one hell of a car, and sucks that only the good die
young. My Camry will probably bury me.

========================================
*** FICTION *** 
Order Up the Night 
a half-assed play 
by Jeff Somers 
========================================

A smoky local bar on a wednesday night. Not crowded, but full. Rock music,
smoke, and voices fill the dim air. A rear table, with three men sitting at it:
Tom, blonde and thin with delicate wire-rim glasses; Rick, dark-haired with a
sharp face his friends describe as rat-like; Harold, hefty and jowly and
perpetually sweating. The table is densely covered with bottles and ash trays.

ACT ONE SCENE ONE

(a waitress brings a round of beers)

TOM: Thanks, my dear  -I think I love you!

HAROLD: It seems, my dear, that you have captured our hearts.

WAITRESS: I'd settle for $9.50.

TOM: That hurts, mlady. But love knows no insult it cannot defeat  -heres
twenty, keep the change.

WAITRESS: you're some sort of prince, huh?

HAROLD: Fare thee well, good woman! Well not soon forget you!

RICK: you're both asses, I must point out.

HAROLD: Just because women paralyze you is not my concern, Ricky. Were just
having some fun.

TOM: Speaking of fun  -wasnt fun personified in the form of Calvin supposed to
show up tonight?

HAROLD: Thats why the place seems so dim and drab: our shining star isn't here.

TOM: Maybe he's ensnared in Veronica-land.

RICK: I think youve hit the nail on the head, Tommy. Cals movements have been
limited to a ten-foot radius around Veronicas person, thats for sure.

HAROLD: You know, its weird, though. As dedicated as he is, sometimes he seems
to, well, dislike her. You know?

TOM: Yeah. Sometimes, at least. he's called her some pretty shitty things when
she's not around, thats for sure.

RICK: haven't we all.

HAROLD: don't let Cal hear you say that.

RICK: Hed just agree. Listen up, lads, I have secret gossip, not to ever be
repeated to anyone. Your words?

TOM: Done.

HAROLD: And done.

RICK: Cal hit her a few weeks ago.

TOM: No!

HAROLD: You're fucking kidding me!

RICK: I never kid, especially about other people's delicious  misery. Smacked
her right in the kisser, had to drive her to the ER.

TOM: (snapping his fingers) I remember her being "sick" for a couple of days -

RICK: Yep.

TOM: Wow. I never would have thought Cal was violent like that.

HAROLD: Come on  -Cal? Fucker's got a temper so short you can barely measure the
concept. How many times have we ended our evenings here shouting with him?

RICK: He shoved you around that one time, didn't he?

TOM: And I him. It's a big leap from there to putting Veronica in the hospital.

RICK: Not for Cal, it's not. I've known him longer than any of you and he's
always been a demon child. Back in grammar school he got sent home for two weeks
because he was beating up every kid he could get his hands on, including me.

TOM: I still don't see it.

HAROLD: All right, why not pick a fight with him and let's see what happens.

TOM: Hey  -let's not forget we're talking about a friend of ours. A good friend.
Maybe we should give him half a break.

RICK: Cal's thick-skinned, Tommy. He can handle our harsh opinion.

HAROLD: Ah, but can we handle his opinion of harsh us?

(enter the waitress)

WAITRESS: Everything okay here, boys?

RICK: Boys? We are as men, honey.

WAITRESS: Uh-huh. What are you, twenty-one?

RICK: Twenty-five, crone, although I can understand how one of your advanced
years could make such a mistake. At a great distance it all must blur into
indistinct greys.

WAITRESS: That's funny. Twenty-five makes you as a kid to me, guy. You want
another round or what?

HAROLD: You've got spunk, baby. Have a seat!

WAITRESS: Oh, christ.

RICK: We insist. Your tip depends on it.

TOM: Leave her alone, guys.

HAROLD: No, we insist.

WAITRESS: (sitting) Okay, okay. It's slow anyway. Uh...you guys aren't hitting
on me, are you?

HAROLD: I think I am insulted.

RICK: We are of the highest moral intent, my dear.

TOM: Good god, I hope not.

RICK: Besides, you're not really drunk enough, are you?

TOM: Good god.

WAITRESS: I'm not sure a tip is worth this, fellas.

HAROLD: Wait, please! We just want you to settle a debate for us. We need a
woman's point of view.

TOM: We do?

RICK: Of course! Brilliant, Harold, brilliant. Please, miss, stay a few moments
more.

WAITRESS: Okay.

HAROLD: Your charm is still a force, my friend. I commend you.

WAITRESS: I ain't got all night, boys.

RICK: Here it is, then: a friend of ours smacked his girlfriend recently  -

HAROLD: - and we wonder whether you, as a woman, would think he was innately
violent and thusly dangerous, or just a normal guy who unforgivably lost his
temper, based on that one single event?

WAITRESS: Are you guys serious?

TOM: Hopefully not.

RICK: Tommy, grow up. My dear, we are completely serious, and value your
opinion. Hulking savage or ordinary guy?

WAITRESS: Weird...all right. Sorry, but I go with ordinary guy.

HAROLD: Really, why? I'm surprised.

TOM: Because, you moron, men are all violent. That one of us snaps and smacks a
woman is sadly not surprising. What is surprising is that it doesn't happen more
often.

WAITRESS: Exactly.

RICK: Traitor.

HAROLD: We're going to kick your ass outside, sensitive-boy.

TOM: Oh, please.

WAITRESS: Am I done? I'm going now.

HAROLD: You chased her away.

TOM: Shut up. I really don't care about your idiotic social experiments.

RICK: He tires of our company, poor guy. Too bad he can't find company of his
own or he'd march right out of here and dispense with us.

HAROLD: Being unpopular can dilute your grander urges, I assume.

TOM: For god's sake  -

RICK: All right, all right. Nothing but serious contemplations from now on,
okay? Besides, since we seem to have alienated our barmaid, I imagine beer will
soon be scarce here, dimming our spirits. Doleful conversation won't be
difficult.

HAROLD: Well said.

TOM: You know, I suppose it never occurred to either of you yokels, but I
actually like Ronnie. She's a sweet girl.

HAROLD: Ah, you say that about all the girlfriends, Tommy. You're a serial
platonic-crush kind of guy, is what.

TOM: Hiding your savagery behind obfuscation and words will do you no good. What
you're saying is, I'm a nice guy  -no shame in that.

HAROLD: Tom, "nice guy" is just another way of saying "schmuck".

RICK: Quit pissing, you idiots. Tom's a slack-jawed angel and you're a fucking
asshole, Harry. That's established. Can we move to more fertile conversational
ground?

HAROLD: How about your lacking personality, Ricky?

RICK: Fuck off.

TOM: There's Cal. The room's brighter already.

ACT TWO SCENE ONE

(same table, no time has passed. Enter CALVIN)

RICK: By the pricking of my thumbs...

TOM: Hey, Cal.

HAROLD: Beat Ronnie lately, Cal?

RICK: Oh, shut the fuck up, Harry!

(Calvin is a thin young man with completely nondescript features. He resembles
any number of people you might pass in the street. In appearance, he is
completely forgettable)

CALVIN: Buy me a beer for that one, asshole. (sits) Rick, you've got a mouth
like a sewer, you know that? Everything runs out.

RICK: Sorry, Cal. They plied me with drink.

TOM: Don't believe it, Cal. He was dying to tell us.

HAROLD: Here you go, Cal. But it was worth it, just to see your face.

CALVIN: And I get domestic beer for your penance? Jesus Christ, life's unfair.
And to answer your question, I haven't touched the creature recently  -but that
actually brings me to my purpose for this evening.

RICK: I had no idea we were required to have purposes. I'd rather slack, to be
honest.

HAROLD: I was told there would be no math.

TOM: I'm becoming ashamed to be sitting here with all of you.

RICK: Oh, calm yourself.

HAROLD: Sissy.

CALVIN: Shut up, you magpies. Let's have a toast, what do you say? To bachelor
friends, and the He Man Woman-Haters Club.

HAROLD: I can't toast that, sir. I don't hate women  -never have.

RICK: I'll toast anything, we all know what my allegiances are worth. I'm
fickle.

CALVIN: Tommy? Are you with me?

TOM: 'fraid not, captain.

CALVIN: Ah, forget the bunch of you. It's a sad age when a man can't even count
on finding a few misogynists to champion his cause. I'll tell you this, though:
if any of them deserves it, its Veronica.

RICK: Deserves what?

CALVIN: Do you know what that woman did to me? She cheated on me.

TOM: What? You're kidding!

CALVIN: I kid you not. And she did it with this asshole right here: our local
Cad, Ricky.

HAROLD: My fucking god.

RICK: Uh...

CALVIN: Don't insult me with a denial, old boy. I won't believe it.

HAROLD: Ricky?

CALVIN: Don't worry, Rick. I'm not angry with you, you know.

RICK: Uh, no?

CALVIN: No  -I blame the whore who cuckolded me.

RICK: Wow, Jesus, Cal I don't know what to-

CALVIN: Rick  -I understand. We're guys, Ricky. She twists up to you and you're
not going to pass her by. No, Rick  -I admit I wanted to kill you when I first
found out, but I try to be a reasonable man, you know. You were tempted  -she
did it to me, not you.

RICK: So...

HAROLD: So what are you going to do then, Cal? Since you're passing the usual
macho shit-kicking in favor of misogynistic bullshit, I'd like to know what's
breeding in that evil mind of yours.

TOM: I'm not sure I want to hear this.

RICK: Uh, me -

CALVIN: That's why we're here, that's the evening's work. But first: cocktails!

(Rick stands up, looks around, and simply walks away)

HAROLD: Work doesn't sound very appealing.

CALVIN: Rick, stay with us! (he stands) Harry, you haven't lifted a finger your
whole life, work will do you good. Rick! Hey, Rick! (he follows Rick off stage)

TOM: I don't like the sound of this, Harry.

HAROLD: Oh, come on. Ricky's schtupping Veronica, Cal is gone loco mojo  -the
best night we've had in eons, buddy!

TOM: I dunno  -I'm getting a creepy feeling about it all, you know? Cal can be a
bastard, sure, but tonight he's one step beyond, you know? He's fucking evil,
tonight.

HAROLD: You're easily wilted, my sensitive boy.

TOM: Christ, can you stop the clever wit for one second and become a normal
human being?

HAROLD: Afraid not.

SCENE TWO

(at the bar. RICK is sitting there, trying to catch the bartender's attention.
he is quickly joined by CALVIN.)

CALVIN: Rick...there you are. What the hell is wrong?

RICK: Cal, this is a little too much for a simple boy like me. Cal, I'm  -I'm
sorry, man.

CALVIN: (chuckles) Ricky, I swear to god there is no hard feeling between us.

RICK: How can that be? How can you know and not want to kick my teeth in?

CALVIN: Hang out a moment. (to bartender) Two shots Vat69, chum. Ricky, it's
because I'm going to kick her teeth in, and worse. (sighs) You didn't do
anything unexpected, don't you see? I always knew you'd jump on her in an
instant if you got half in invite. What I didn't expect was that lying whore
giving you the word.

RICK: Jesus, Cal  -whatever you want, I'll do it. If I can make this up to you,
tell me.

CALVIN: Stop beating yourself up. Besides, you'll get your chance at redemption,
Rick. You're part of the plan. We're all going to have a chance to be better
men, tonight, instead of drifting along in our usual mediocrity. Tonight we rise
above.

RICK: All right. Let me buy you a drink, then.

CALVIN: Good enough. (drinks) Hey, Rick, let me ask you a question.

RICK: Anything.

CALVIN: How was she?

RICK: What?

CALVIN: Veronica. What kind of lay was she?

RICK: I don't -

CALVIN: Come on, we're friends here! Was she a workout, did she just lay there,
did she come, did she blow you? I want all the intimate details (nudges Rick) I
don't trust me faded memories when it comes to Ronnie's ivory thighs.

RICK: Come on, Cal. I'm not enjoying this kidding around. If you're mad be mad,
take a swing, curse me out  -but don't make this any-

CALVIN: Ricky, Ricky  -you've got me all wrong. This is clinical interest. I
need to know if she broke a sweat on top of you, if she let you come in her
mouth, if she took it in the ass  -

RICK: Cal, fucking stop it!

CALVIN: Okay, Ricky. I'll stop. It was just intellectual curiosity, though. I
swear.

RICK: Let's go back. They look lonely without us.

CALVIN: They'll survive. Tom has a nonsexual crush on Harry you know.

RICK: Come on. Let's go back.

CALVIN: Rick  -sorry if I freaked you out a little  -but I'm counting on you,
you know.

RICK: Come on. SCENE THREE

(enter Calvin and Rick)

TOM: You fellows seem unreasonably chummy. You're freaking me out.

RICK: We're square.

HAROLD: We knew that.

CALVIN: We will be.

TOM: Your "work" again?

HAROLD: I'm dying to hear it, Cal. Your descent into jealous dementia ought to
be instructive, right? Maybe I could get published on the broad back of you
psychosis.

TOM: I want to hear it too, Cal. Spit it out so we can get on with the evening.

CALVIN: Gentlemen, I've been wronged.

HAROLD: Oh, lord.

RICK: Cal -

CALVIN: Bear with me, my friends. I'm counting on your patience and intellect.
Just hear me out, that's all I ask. You're smart men  -and you've all been
wronged at one time or another. Don't deny it  -you've all eaten shit served up
by our supposed lovers. We all sit here wronged  -I just happen to have the
freshest wounds. Well, tonight, I offer you a chance to get even. In magnificent
style.

HAROLD: Cut to the chase, Calvin. Less style, and more substance, as the saying
goes.

CALVIN: (leaning forward) All right, you weak-kneed cretins: Ronnie played me
for a fool, and now I'm even denied the chance to make a little noise about it?

TOM: Life's unfair, Cal.

CALVIN: Don't tell me about unfair, you numbskull. What's unfair is spilling
your guts, entrusting your secrets, and getting the image of Rick fucking her as
your reward.

RICK: Jesus Christ, Cal, decide if you hate me or not, okay?

CALVIN: Stop whining, Ricky. I don't hate you  -that's the point. But I got you
in my head, Rick, and I don't like it.

HAROLD: This place is getting humid, Cal, and my main suspect is your frequently
open mouth and all the hot air leakin from it.

CALVIN: I suppose some support is too much to expect.

TOM: Jesus...

HAROLD: Calvin, maybe if we knew what the fuck we're supposed to be supporting 
-we're not your goddamn brownshirts, you know.

TOM: Seig heil.

CALVIN: I have a mission for us, then.

HAROLD: Hallelujah!

CALVIN: I'll need your trust and good opinion.

HAROLD: Hear hear!

CALVIN: Because I want to kill Veronica, and I'll need your help.

ACT THREE

(They sit for a moment in silence)

(Rick stands)

RICK: Fuck you.

CALVIN: Ricky -

RICK: Fuck this, Cal. Just take this sick shit and walk.

HAROLD: Whoa  -Rick, sit down, man, sit down, he was just kidding, man.

TOM: He had to be.

CALVIN: Hell I was.

TOM: Cal -

CALVIN: THE HELL I WAS!

RICK: I'll, ah, leave you ghouls to your plots. Sick shit. You're a psychopath,
Cal, and you guys  -you fucking guys make me sick. Sitting here like -

CALVIN: Rick, stay or go but shut up!

(Rick exits)

HAROLD: That was hardly friendly, Cal.

CALVIN: Did you hear me? Harry, are you autistic? Am I kidding? Is this a
fucking joke? (pounds table) I'll need your help. That's why I'm here.

(There is a moment of quiet)

HAROLD: You mean it's not our conversation and personality?

(Another moment of quiet)

TOM: Jesus. You're serious.

CALVIN: I'm tired of getting fucked over, boys. I may end up going to jail -

TOM: You'll definitely go to jail.

CALVIN: - I might fuck up my entire life -

TOM: You will fuck up your entire life.

CALVIN:  - but at least I won't have Ricky and Ronnie fucking in my head for
eternity. It'll be worth it.

TOM: Oh, no, Cal, no - you -

HAROLD: How would you do it?

TOM: Harry, you're not helping.

HAROLD: Not trying to. Cal?

(Calvin rises)

CALVIN: Murder is simple, friends  -killing someone is as easy as piercing a
vital body part and refusing medical aid, as basic as denying someone oxygen
until they stop breathing. Nothing simpler, really. Murder is instinct, Harry.
It's in us, in our genes, our DNA. It's how we live  -we murder everything.
We've got killing down to a science. No, the hard part isn't the murder, it's
how to get away with it.

TOM: Calvin, that's -

HAROLD: That's interesting, I never thought about it.

TOM: - crazy! Cal, things like Ronnie and Rick happen. They just do. They happen
all the time and no one hardly ever murders someone about it, you know.

HAROLD: How do you know?

CALVIN: How do you know, Tommy? If most of these murders were successful, you
might not know. By definition, a successful murder goes unpunished.

TOM: Do you really believe that every guy who gets cheated on kills the guilty
parties?

CALVIN: No. But I'll bet you some of them do. And some of them get away with it.

TOM: Cal, this is crazy. But go ahead and let me hear it.

HAROLD: Thank god.

TOM: So I can talk you down from this ledge.

CALVIN: Dull, but acceptable. I have a strong feeling that simplicity is the key
in these sorts of ventures. Complexity is not the answer, gentlemen, calm is.
Any plan can be ruined by panic, very few can be salvaged by contingency. So, my
plan is simple: I'll kill her in private and bury her body. I have a few places
in mind where she would disappear for a long time.

HAROLD: Calvin, you're incredible. How will you actually kill her?

CALVIN: I was thinking of very slowly beating her to death. When I can no longer
recognize her, I'll bury what's left.

TOM: Cal, get off it. You don't have that in you. Your malfunction's not that
major.

CALVIN: Oh, sweet jesus, Mr. Tom has a tumor of morality swelling the dark
depths of his skull. Keep it to yourself, father Tom, or your cure might become
necessary.

TOM: Will you beat me until you can't recognize me?

CALVIN: Apparently, you don't recognize me.

TOM: And I didn't have to lay a finger on you.

(a few moments of quiet)

HAROLD: This sexual tension is killing me. You two need to consumate, and
quickly.

TOM: Fuck you, Harry. Calvin's got an engorged sense of power right now,
believing he might actually be able to look her in the face and kill her, but
this is serious, so shut the fuck up. This is not grist for your fucking smart
mouth!

HAROLD: Ah, but it is.

TOM: Calvin, can't you see this isn't going to work?

CALVIN: Unless I get horribly  unlucky, Tom, it will work.

HAROLD: And Calvin, as you know, is one of the luckiest people in the world.

TOM: Except he's unlucky in love.

CALVIN: You know what, Tom, you can just follow Ricky on out of here, okay> If
you're not gonna back me up on this -

TOM: (stands) Not only am I not going to back you up, old buddy, I'm gonna stop
you. And if I somehow don't manage that, Cal, I'll turn you in. So give up your
little-man revenge fantasy and go home and get some sleep.

CALVIN: Sleep? Get out, you cocksucker. Get out you goddamn weak sister  -get
out! Leave this to the real men then. We'll handle it.

TOM: No problem, Cal. I've said my piece. This wasn't funny, and I won't play
this game.

(exit Tom)

HAROLD: What  the hell does weak-sister mean?

CALVIN: Thank god you're here, Harry. At least now I know who I can count on.

HAROLD: Calvin?

CALVIN: Yes?

HAROLD: You don't really expect me to help you kill someone, do you?

ACT FOUR SCENE ONE

(sometime later  -Harry is gone. Enter Tom)

TOM: I thought you'd be gravedigging by now.

CALVIN: You all left me, so I just kept drinking. I'm in no shape to murder
anyone tonight.

TOM: Thank god.

CALVIN: Have a seat, Tom.

TOM: I thought you didn't care for me, Calvin. (sits and lights cigarette) I was
under the impression my star had faded from your sky.

CALVIN: Yeah yeah  -where've you been?

TOM: Ronnie's. For coffee.

CALVIN: Wonderful.

TOM: What happened to you, Cal?

CALVIN: I explained all that, didn't I?

TOM: Did you? I don't think I heard you. Come on, Cal. You're sitting here by
yourself  -doesn't that tell you anything? And your first answer falls on deaf
ears.

CALVIN: It tells me that my friends -

TOM: Oh, shit, forget it, Cal. Rick's bringing her here, you know.

CALVIN: What?

TOM: You heard me.

CALVIN: Betrayal.

TOM: Fuck you. So sorry you'll have to deal with your own idiocy, my friend. I
apologize for calling you an asshole. I feel regret for your discomfort. Seeing
your distress I wish I'd concealed your plan to murder that lovely girl. Burn my
membership in the He Man Woman Haters Club. Revoke my invitation to cigars and
Brandy in the Study. Never speak to me again. And please  -try to sleep at
night.

(enter Rick and Veronica)

VERONICA: Hello, Calvin.

CALVIN: Very well then!

SCENE TWO

(at the bar. Tom joins Harold, who toasts him)

HAROLD: She's got a big heart, talking to him.

TOM: Calvin's obviously a sad soul, Harry.

HAROLD: Yeah. I kind of respect his effort tonight, though.

TOM: What? How's that?

HAROLD: Tommy, I know you're riding high on a little moral wave right now, but
you've got to understand something. We all lead lives of quiet desperation,
right?

TOM: Not very original.

HAROLD: Screw original. We all go through life and we eat shit and we eat it and
eat it, over and over, we suck up humiliation and betrayal and defeat. And we
never do anything about it. We never make any noise. Tonight, that's what Calvin
was doing. It was misguided and stupid and he's really going to regret tying
this bag on tonight, but I respect his attempt to make some noise, to not go
quietly into the night, et cetera.

TOM: I didn't think of it that way.

HAROLD: He's a prick for tonight, Tommy, but he went kicking and screaming, at
least for a while. He was just trying to save his soul. And we stopped him.
(toasts Tom again)

TOM: What does that make us?

HAROLD: Murderers.

THE END

======================================== 
*** ESSAY *** 
My Eventual Stalker
by Jeff Somers
========================================

Editor's Note: This was originally written for HiJinx at the request of Joanie,
it's uber-babe editorix. Unfortunately, I never saw it in print and HiJinx seems
to have disappeared, so I'm using it here to fill some space.

It had only been a $6 cover, which meant more beer for us. Irving Plaza was
basically a gym with a decent sound system, and it was painfully obvious that
about 30 people had shown up to hear Too Much Joy - which also meant: more beer
for us. I forced Ken to buy me a beer by sheer force of personality, and settled
back to complain that Rakes Progress was the more popular band only because of
the unfairness of the universe. Ken agreed silently, which was his way. The
unfairness of the universe was a favorite topic of mine, and I sensed he was
getting bored with my drunken tirades concerning it.

There might have only been 30 people, but there was a lot of love in Irving
Plaza that night. Too Much Joy hadnt had an album out in 3 years and their
sudden appearance in New York City, crap capital of the world, was an
encouraging sign to the faithful. Maybe the rumors of Tim Quirks priesthood were
not true, after all, and I know I was not alone in hoping that the sensitive Mr.
Quirk would take up the ancient Joy tradition of disrobing on stage during some
of his more passionate vocals. I mentioned this hope to Ken, who nodded
sententiously but, as usual, said nothing.

My Eventual Stalker was moving through the crowd with a girlfriend of hers,
selling their Zine, which I will not name for fear of reviving the nightmare. I
was favorably disposed towards them both because a) they were Too Much Joy fans
and b) their skirts were rather short. They approached Ken and I and asked us to
buy their Zine for $1 each and Ken and I, being natural born suckers, smiled and
did so. My Eventual Stalker faded away to charm more cash out of unwitting
drunken men, because she had not yet become my stalker.

Too Much Joy hit the stage in fine form, drinking beer and urging us all to buy
the band drinks. I jumped around and manhandled Ken, who stoicly watched,
bobbing his head a little to the music (which is the most you get out of Ken,
usually) while I sweated and hugged him. I was suddenly hit with an urge to have
a cigarette, although I don't smoke any more, and as TMJ launched into their
sublimely punk-as-fuck version of "Seasons in the Sun" I asked the girls
standing in front of us if I could bum a cigarette. I got a menthol from My
Eventual Stalker, who gave me a wry smile and a glassy-eyed stare, and a light.
Then I leapt onto Ken and he cradled me in his arms, and I started to scream
"PLAY TAKE A LOT OF DRUGS!", which they eventually did, although I am unsure how
much my influence had to do with it.

Later on, riding the train home with Ken sitting silently next to me, I read
their Zine and was impressed. It was funny, disrespectful, and in their article
concerning scamming they suggested that the easiest scam in the world was
getting young men to give them money simply because young men will always give
young girls money, especially if they are wearing rather short skirts. I thought
that was great, because Swine respect other Swine when they smell them. I
stumbled home and wrote the Editor a drunken letter, where I blessed her for a)
reviving my faith in beauty and b) letting me bum a cigarette. I waxed slightly
poetic, sealed and stamped an envelope, and passed out at my desk. For some
reason when I woke up the next day (my head lying in a deep puddle of drool) I
mailed the damned thing, and promptly forgot all about it.

A week later I got a letter back, which proclaimed me the best thing since
sliced bread. She told me I had saved her from a major depression, because her
boyfriend had dumped her recently, and that the only problem was she couldnt
really remember who I had been, because shed been pretty stoned that night. It
was a touching, sweet letter; it was obvious she was smart, it was obvious my
letter had touched her in ways I had never imagined, it was obvious she was 15.
It was also obvious she lived not far from me and had given me her phone number.
I called Ken and told him the new story, and he grunted at me in disinterest. I
thought about her letter for a while, and decided I needed to end this, quickly.
I wrote her back telling her that we could never be, partly because I have an
innate fear of anyone who makes those kind of emotional connections with people
they cannot even clearly remember, and partly because I knew the definition of
the word statutory.

A few days later, secure that I had handled the situation with aplomb and
maturity, I was sitting at home smoking cigarettes and feeling slothful, when
she called me. Using my mailing address, shed called information and gotten my
number, under the impression that normal, well adjusted people like being
stalked. I suppose some people might get a charge out of someone tracking them
down in this urban jungle, but I am patently not one of them. I barely tolerate
my friends, I barely want to hear from people I know and care about, the last
thing I thought I'd want is a phone call from a total stranger. As I considered
it, however, I began to realize heretofore unplumbed depths of weirdness in my
own psyche: I realized with a sinking feeling, and then a slow burn of
exhilaration, that I'd been stalked! At least I'd been stalked if you define
"stalked" as someone acquiring information about you that you did not provide
for the expressed purpose of making unwanted personal contact with you. And here
is where everything fell apart, because I loved the fact that I had a stalker. I
encouraged her to call me often, I was enthusiastic about the dramas and
tragedies that would enliven my otherwise grim life over the course of her
stalking, and I was already planning to call everyone I knew and brag about
being stalked. This, naturally, made her not want to stalk me, since a key
ingredient to obsession is the unwillingness of the stalkee to be involved in
it. Otherwise, stalking becomes dangerously like "dating". She grew disgusted,
and hung up.

AND that was my brief brush with the flame of obsession. Two weeks later I saw
My One-time Stalker at a Liz Phair show in midtown I went to with Lauren (who is
much more talkative than Ken and smells quite a bit better, too), where my
stalker was part of a pack of rabid kids chasing the aforementioned Liz Phair
down the street, screaming like a pack of wild hyenas (as opposed to the tame
hyenas you see so often) apparently hell bent on murdering her. I laid my head
on Laurens shoulder and felt a stab of regret. I had lost the only person who
had ever wanted to stalk me. Lauren clutched me to her bosom and told me there
would be others, just think of all the weirdos in the world! This was small
comfort, though. I swore to myself then and there, if I were to ever be so lucky
as to invite obsession into my life again, I would not screw it up, but nurture
it. Next time, I will be ready for My Eventual Stalker.

========================================
*** FICTION ***
I Don't Even trust Me.
By Jeff Somers 
========================================

Monday, 4:23am

I wondered when it had begun.

I sat burning cigarettes in the dark, filling the place with smoke and staring,
listening and feeling my eyes adjust. I could see more clearly in the dark. I
think I always have, I just never had occasion to notice before. Taking a sip of
my highball I marvel at how clearly the ice clinks, ringing through the dark
room, like dense bizarre music I couldn't quite understand. It joined with
everything else perfectly, a symphony of noise solely for me.

Uselessness and pity and carefully I placed my glass back on the desk, it had to
go exactly onto the same stain, concentric circles would ruin the sharp angles
that soothed me. I let my fingers trace the grain of the wood, feeling it rub
against the pits and valleys of my finger prints. I could hear the scraping and
made a rhythm of it. Below that, my burning cigarette was like a forest fire,
with every mote of dust hitting the floor an explosion mixed with the screams of
billions of dust mits and other tiny bugs. Their deaths, while necessary, scared
me. What if I were one of them, and my own doom, impossibly huge, loomed above,
unseen.

A new smell drove such dim thoughts from my mind: Andrea was here again, with
her slightly apple scent and tireless chatter. She was speaking, as she always
did, and I was nodding, the motion of my head creating eddies in the air and
moving her scent around erratically. It clings like heavy smoke.

She moves near me and I can feel her breath against me, her slight heat. Her
voice is masking all the other noise, the symphony I'd been enjoying, but I
stare at my cigarette and concentrate, and I can just hear the forest fire,
serene and constant, battling her apple-smell and painful voice, which gets
louder and louder until I realize with a start that she is shouting and I feel
rude. Before I can do anything about it, however, she grabs my chin and twists
my head until I am looking at her.

I'm amazed at how she's changed, all angles and shadows where there had been
depth and detail, an occasional smile. The lines of her new face are deep and
complex as they work together and I realize with a start that they were really
one line, wound around her features like a mobius strip. I forgot to pick her
words out of the cacophony and just studied the lines, seeking their beginning.
I was very close to deciphering it all when she pushed me away, turning her back
on me, and there it was:

It traced the path of her spine, a spider-silk thread-like crease which crept
from her hair. I wondered if it would come loose if I pulled, if I could then
tug gently and unravel her.

Then she was gone, and I had no idea how long she'd been gone.

Wednesday, 1:19pm

In the middle of our conversation, Andrea pauses for breath, and I get lost
listening to the waiters whispering about the soup of the day.

I'd been drifting in and out all day, trying to pay attention but

The waiters were whispering like burning paper about the soup of the day,
Manhattan Clam Chowder. No one had ordered it all day and no one knew why. The
chef was in tears over the vats of soup in the kitchen, he was refusing to cook
anything else and the orders were piling up. The patrons were getting angry and
a waiter had been attacked brutally over at table 23.

A bold plan was hatched. As the waiters went on break, they prowled into the
kitchen one by one and consumed as much soup as they could. Then they pretended
the soup had been ordered. The chef was calming, but a new crisis had erupted:
one by one the waiters were coming down with food poisoning.

Our lunch arrives, I haven't heard anything Andrea has said. The plates and
trays fill me with dread as they arrive, as they are set upon the table and
gleam at us with portent and danger. The idea that they may be poisioned as well
-that everything in the place might be-  can't be ignored. Out of the corners of
my eyes (which I keep trained on Andrea, as she is talking again) I can see the
waiters dropping in sickness, their fellows scuttling forward to drag them out
of the way, back into the kitchen. Grimly, I stare at Andrea. She is eating her
salad.

Around us, people begin to cry out, clutching their abdomens, falling from their
seats. They are being poisoned, they're all dying, and Andrea has yet to
breathe. I grip the arms of my chair until my knuckles are white and numb.

The last waiter, pale, shaking, near death, crawls from the kitchen in a fury of
puke and blood. He makes it on all fours to the erasable marker board which
lists all the specials, reaches up carefully, and wipes the Manhattan Clam
Chowder off the board.

The restaurant grew quiet as table after table became too weak to moan or shout,
and Andrea's voice swam back.

"You're not eating." I think she said.

"I'm too young to die." I think I replied.

Wednesday, 11:43am

I'd been riding the subway all day with my briefcase, reading other people's
newspapers and listening to the rustling of the paper. I'd been riding the
subways ever since I'd been fired. It was peaceful. The newspapers were like
wind in the grass.

The amazing thing was, all day I read other people's newspapers  -ones I found,
ones I read over their shoulders-  and every one of them was different, every
one of them had different headlines, different stories, photos, and scores. I'd
always suspected it would come to this: there was too much news for one regular
newspaper. There had to be dozens. And it was impossible to find out about it
all in just an hour, over coffee  -it took all day to read it all. Any less and
you weren't informed.

I thought someone ought to be informed.

"Do you mind?"

From what seemed a great distance, the person next to me spoke. It had been days
since I'd heard anyone's voice, and I looked up from the newspaper in surprise.

"That's very rude."

I studied the headlines sitting across from me instead for a while. When my
neighbor left, they left their paper behind. I didn't understand people any
more.

Sunday, 9:33am

"I think they're making the coffee with urine these days."

I'm tapping my keyboard randomly, filling the screen with soothing gibberish
while they made small talk. I laughed at everything, because invariably small
talk is meant to be humorous. I wish the phone would ring, since that usually
made them walk away. They didn't bother me, really, but they distracted.

Tap, tap, tap.

"Is it five o'clock yet? I think tuesdays have seventy minutes in each hour."

I nodded and giggled, maybe for too long. The letters were starting to come
together and make sense.

I had a theory, one that went with the infinite monkeys thing  -that if I typed
randomly long enough, the letters would come to make sense, and I suspected the
sense it would make would be startling.

"Boy, you look busy. Where'd you learn to type so fast?"

Every time I felt close to my discovery, someone pestered me with some inane
curisoity, the phrases and sounds and breaths of vapid, endless stretches of
self-contained entropy, tugging at me. The truth, embedded in the random letters
on my screen, was trying to catch my attention and these little black holes were
pulling me, turning me, getting me lost.

"If I quit and start my own company, will you work for me?"

I mumbled and murmured and they went away, and when I looked back at the screen
my eyes caught the word, buried amidst the chaos: listen.

I stopped typing and leaned back in my chair. "That's what I've been trying to
do." I said to myself.

Friday, 7:13pm

Everyone seemed to be talking at once, so I stirred my Manhattan and tried to
remember what I'd been thinking of earlier in the day, before I'd been
interrupted. The bar was filled with smoke and voices. Some of the smoke was
mine, but none of the words which swam around belonged to me.

I turned to Alec. "What?"

He said something about the bar being too crowded with guys like us, trolling
for chicks. I replied that I wasn't trolling for chicks, I was drinking myself
into an early grave. Alec laughed and told me the bar was too crowded with
those, too.

My drink was bitter and warm and I was drinking it too slowly, so I took a big
gulp and studied my shoes, which were brown and too tight and scuffed. I
wondered if the people I met ever looked at my shoes, and what conclusions they
reached. For a moment, I thought perhaps that had been what I'd been thinking of
earlier...no, something quite like it, though, something

I glanced at Sharon. "I'm sorry?"

"Why are you hiding your gorgeous self over here, baby?"

I told her I wasn't hiding.

"You're brooding, all alone. Is everything okay?"

I told her I was just trying to remember something, and that remembering
required peace, sometimes. After a few moments I realized she had left me alone.

I knew what I'd been thinking of before had nothing to do with Sharon  -or with
anyone, for that matter. It danced on the edges of my thoughts carelessly,
always out of reach. The more I concentrated on it, the filmier it became. I
became engrossed in my cocktail, and I wondered who had invented it, who had
come across this particular combination of unnaturally occurring liquids.

Hours later, Sharon was next to me again. "What?" I said.

"I said, quit staring at your drink and start staring at me."

For a moment the words don't make sense, and then they fall into place.

"Stare  -yeah!" I sat up, suddenly animated. "That's it!"

She said something, but I was already moving.

Thursday, 3:43am

"You know, Bobby, you haven't been yourself lately, you drift. Is there
something you want to talk about? Sometimes, lying in bed at night with the
quiet and the moonlight is the best time to open up and talk. It's so peaceful 
-as if we're the only people in the world right now, you know?"

In the dark, the ceiling was a mottled grey, undulating with each breeze through
the tree outside. Little societies of shadows formed and split, died and
evolved, little revolutions of moonlight.

Next to me, Andrea was talking.

"What do you think about Costa Rica this summer? Francine went last year and
hasn't been able to stop talking about it. I was thinking we could get a really
cheap flight if we planned this far ahead, you know? Do you think you could get
two weeks off in June? It would be lovely, we could drink Margaritas and make
love on the beach.

The drapes were billowing into the room, pregnant from the wind for a moment and
then retreating to hang limp. They made soft, velvety sounds as they moved.
Every time they moved inward, the shadows on the ceiling shrank away in fear,
crwoding back towards the back of the room. Then, it seemed, they would be
inspired with foolish bravery and they'd swell outward, like a crowd of people
breaking through barriers, and the drapes would deflate, the New World Order
defeated. When the shadows shrank, I imagined I could hear them scream.

"Don't forget the Rogers' party on Saturday. I know you think Tom is a drip,
you've said as much, but Carol is a good friend of mine so we can make an
appearance. We won't stay long if you don't want to  -I could use a sleepy
weekend too, actually.

Andrea was warm, she was glowing with the perfumed heat next to me and the
shadows crawled away from her, and I resented her for it.

Monday, 10:34am

I was glad to be at the funeral. At least everybody shut up for a while.

I was listening to the rain as it drummed on the casket and I kept starting a
thought: I can't believe it's raining it's such a cliche and then losing track
of it. The priest was droning and Andrea was crying and my feet were wet, but I
didn't mind. It was as close to silence as I'd been in what seemed like years.

Feeling as if I wasn't really there, I wondered about Andrea's cousin Fred who
was the honoree at this particular burial. I pictured him in the bed of satin,
comfortable in his favorite suit, in the darkness, in the silence. Under all the
world, and the wood and the padding I imagined it was cool and quiet 
-especially quiet.

These thoughts soothed me so when we were walking to the car after all the
histrionics and tears and dead flowers I wasn't annoyed when Andrea began to
talk again. She was just venting at first, anyway, so I could just let it flow
over me, the nasal quality of her voice. I was used to it, so it had a certain
soothing quality of its own.

Eventually, however, I realized she wasn't giving up.

She kept talking and talking.

"Do you mind if we don't go home right away?" she asked.

So I had to keep talking and talking.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't care. Let's get a drink or some coffee or dinner  -whatever. I'm just
sad. I want to talk for a little while before we go home."

I chose not to mention my opinion, which was that we could talk just as well at
home. Instead, I suggested O'Mally's for a cocktail. Once we  hed decided where
to sit and talk, she shut up and stared out of the window.

I listened to the car. My timing belt was going and the bird-like whir was
weaving in and out of the squeaking shocks and the purring engine, and I noticed
when I hit the brakes a new squeal insinuated itself into the mix. Whenever I
got bored I hit the brakes to liven things up.

Later on, she began to talk again, and I would hit the brakes, playfully, to
drown her out.

Thursday, 5:31pm

Everyone was shouting on the bus. The dickhead kid who had started it was
shouting back, and everything he said just started up a firestorm of more
shouts. I sat staring at him, wondering if I'd have the guts to hit the son of a
bitch if he looked at me. The first time, when he'd looked at me and asked if
I'd said that, I'd just looked away, flustered.

Now I was staring at him, hoping for a second chance.

I was lost amongst the other shouters, my mouth open even though I wasn't making
any noise. I didn't see the point, no one would hear me anyway. Their voices had
melted into one another, a