======================================== 
*** THE INNER SWINE ***
Volume 4, Issue 1, March 1998 
www.innerswine.com
========================================

CONCEPT BY Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita
COVER ART BY Jeof Vita
EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers
PUBLISHER: Cassie Moore, who's ashamed to be listed on
this issue. 
WEBMASTERS: Jeof Vita & Ken West 
ADVICE & FREE DRINKS: Is there such a thing as 'free' drinks? 
I think "In Search Of" could do a special about this
particularly rare breed of North American miracle. 
PROOFREADER EXTRAORDINAIRE:
Karen Accavallo OVERALL OFFICIAL COOL CHICK: Lauren Strutzel

OFFICIAL RELIGION: The Church of ME, bwana; chicken sacrifices every wednesday

FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: Lauren Strutzel for being a truly grand friend and for
reading the fiction within and giving it her stamp of approval; Wes Hegg as
usual for valiantly distributing The Inner Swine up north despite the constant
threat of consumer revolt; Misty Quinn for her continuing tolerance of my
friendship and for allowing me to tell the sordid tale of our wedding
shenanigans despite having her name linked to mine in the tabloids as a result
(It's all true!); Elizabeth A., who I love very much for too many reasons to
list; RA for her continuous support and friendship in these chaotic times, which
will never be forgotten; Karen Accavallo also for tolerating me and for inviting
me to her house on Superbowl Sunday (even if she did make me sit in the
bathroom); Jeof Vita for, as always, providing superior artistic support (this
issue's cover is absolutely amazing) and for beating me at chess every time I
get cocky; Ken West for his continuing technical support and the fact that he
still hasn't gotten burned enough to stop loaning me money, CDs, and concert
tickets (its only a matter of time); Cassie Moore for not firing me and for
turning a rosy cheek to my nafarious extracurricular activities at work (see
"official religion", above)

========================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
========================================

EDITORIAL: "PIG IN SHIT # 10: I Found This Fake Nude Photo of Bea Arthur on the
Internet and Christ am I Disturbed" 

FICTION: "Ten Short Stories About The Inner
Swine" 

COMMENTARY: "American Wedding Confidential #4: It's My Scene, Man, and It
Freaks Me Out!"

COMMENTARY: "Cyberotica: The Guy's Guide to Smut-Hunting on the
Internet"

COMMENTARY: "In Defense of Singleness"

COMMENTARY: "Are You Now, or Have You Ever, Been the Sort of Guy to Enjoy
a Mixed Drink with the Word Smoothie  In It?"

FICTION: "No Stranger to Frustration"

---------------------------------------- 
The Inner Swine Volume 4 Issue 1.
Magazine published March, June, September, and December 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
$2.00 (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. The unstoppable Misty S. Quinn, esq. (Left)
requires funds for her various Legal Defense Funds (almost ten dollars raised in
1997!) stemming from various sexual harrassment suits against her, so won't you
please give?

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

WELL, 1998 came limping into The Inner Swine's tortured perception and I really
have little more than a hangover (lingering, still, months after the fact; it's
either a hangover or a brain tumor) to show for the new year. 1997 went by so
fast I'm still pondering whether or not to travel to Cleveland for the World
Series, and one thing I vowed in my drunken stupor on December 31st was to stop
and take stock more often. I vowed not to let 1998 go idly by in a blur of
hangovers, work crises, and weddings.

So far, the only change in my life is a hyper-sensitivity to my body's
continuing downward spiral into infirmity. My back, suspect at best ever since
that Atari Decathalon injury when I was eleven, has decided to quit doing all
the work and has snapped like an old brittle rubber band. My teeth have
rebelled, sending in the Wisdom teeth to show me who's boss. I have this odd
bone spur in my hand that is as endlessly fascinating as it is worrying. My eyes
continue to require space-age polymers to focus, and, worst of all, my liver has
started kicking back. In short, your beloved editor is falling apart, one
gruesome body part at a time.

At some point I overdosed on Doan's Pills and lay in bed floating around my
apartment. A very tiny Beatles Tribute band was on my desk playing "Norwegian
Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" over and over again, except the lead singer sounded
more like Johnny Rotten than John Lennon. The members of the band were no more
than two inches high, each. Sunlight streamed in through the windows and for the
first time in weeks my back wasn't bothering me at all. The idea for the
Greatest Issue of The Inner Swine Ever came through the window on a flaming pie
(cherry, I believe) and I accepted it gratefully, awed at how easily the
potential once seen in this little magazine might yet be realized. Then I ate
the pie (after first extinguishing it, I think) and promptly fell into a
sugar-induced coma.

I woke up and not only did I have no idea what the idea for the zine was, but I
had the worst stomach-ache I've ever experienced. The upside is it was so
nauseating that I instantly forgot about my aching back. The downside should be
pretty obvious.

And so, the greatest idea in the universe, lost to me forever. Don't worry,
pigs, I will be using more drugs and more powerful drugs in my tireless quest to
regain that vision...I mean, after all, that pie was delicious.

MONEY: Brick by brick, Your Editor is rebuilding his long-lost financial empire.
Soon, I hope to be solvent for the first time since 1991. Since I can no longer
drink without experiencing the sort of hair-raising hallucinations previously
only imagined, can not attract any women without getting them drunk first, and
never could sing very well, my budget for wine women and song has dropped off
to: zero. The only concern this raises in the community is how exactly I'm going
to spend my time, now; thankfully I can let Karen Accavallo answer for me when I
say I will be busily downloading porn off the internet. Thanks Karen!

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

SETH AT FACTSHEET FIVE has reviewed us again, the lovable lug, and this time
they wrinkled their brow and took a stand -all the more happy because they
actually liked 3(2): "Best issue so far that combines longer essays and a few
short stories. His analysis of male fetishization of lesbian sex was quite
clever and impressive. He reasons that homosexuality on its own is hardly the
turn-on here, rather it is disguised power roles and a consideration not to
bruise male egos by depicting studfarm macho men. Other stories cover his sojurn
to a friend's wedding, a defense of baseball as the world's greatest sport, and
the mental blandness inflicted by education. His fiction pieces moved along
quickly and surprised me with some novel character roles." I knew that putting
the word "lesbian" in the title would hook the readers...

DAN BUCK, our new big fan from South Dakota, wrote to us and submitted writing:
"Dear Jeff, Hope you are having a happy holiday season. I read your listing in
Factsheet 5. I am sending these in hopes that you can use them. I am such a
fortunate person. Even though I am a diabetic, had cancer, had a couple of
nervous breakdowns, I have had a lot of my writing accepted. It makes me feel
great and useful. Hope you also feel that your zine is of use. Take care of
yourself. Take it easy on yourself over the holiday" Here's one of the stories
Dan sent us:

---------------------------------------
**** THE JOKE ****

After breaking his wife's index finger Jesse gave his mother-in-law an even
bigger lip. Women were always against him. They just weren't made right.

Two years later his wife shot him with his shotgun. He squealed and wept till
she came closer, then he broke her finger. This time it was her middle finger,
so she would have something to look at.

He laughed. The joke killed him worse than the hole in his stomach.

The End 
---------------------------------------

In all honesty, Pigs, I have no comment. I don't often get mailings that leave
me speechless, but there ya go.

ROCKET POETRY AND FICTION MAGAZINE sent me an issue with a rather pushy sticker
on it that said "REVIEW ME". Lacking a compelling reason to do so, I chose not
to. Why this obsession with zine reviews? I don't get it.

PAUL T. OLSON didn't write me directly, but I thought I'd take a moment here to
praise him. While I'm not deeply familiar with his work, he's prolific, polite,
and friendly enough in a world filled with assholes. Check out his advertisement
on page 60 and when you speak of me, speak well.

WELL, that's about it for our mailbag. I don't know if we've finally pissed
everyone off, if we're just too dull these days to inspire comment, or if our
accelerated schedule just hasn't left us any time to receive mail (on the old
system we'd be holding the issue until April 15th, lots more time for letters to
trickle in, eh?) but we're a little light this issue. Not even an insane rant
from Karen Accavallo, for god's sake.

We here at The Inner Swine have always had an uncomfortable relationship with
our readers and the mail they send us. On the one hand, we like the idea that
someone is reading us and we like the idea that they sometimes get excited
enough to write us. On the other hand we regard anyone who feels compelled to
share their opinions with complete strangers to be completely insane. I mean,
the hubris! The wasted energy! You read one word out of this rag and you know,
you just know that we don't really respect or care about anyone elses opinion.
Every page drips with contempt for humanity.

So, then, why do people reach out to touch us? Maybe it's just the normal human
need to communicate, especially with someone you perceive as a like-minded soul.
Maybe it's the voices in their heads, the readership of The Inner Swine being
skewed so dangerously towards mental illness, the latest polls say. Maybe
everyone is a sarcastic arrogant bastard like your editor here and we're all
shouting in a locked room, convinced that someone is listening exclusively to
our sweet voice above the cacophony.

Maybe not.

I'll take this opportunity to ruminate on our position in the universe: small,
unnoticed, and sarcastic. Please feel free to correspond with The Inner Swine.
We love letters. Please?

======================================== 
*** EDITORIAL ***  
PIG IN SHIT #10:
I FOUND THIS FAKE NUDE PHOTO OF BEA ARTHUR* ON THE INTERNET AND CHRIST AM I
DISTURBED The Great Things About Pornography 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

"Eunuch Boy, Eunuch Boy Thought a lawnmower was another toy Can't even make it
through a day of school They try to stomp his shriveled tool It must suck to
know you'll never fuck" - The Descendents

Many Bothans died to bring you this information:

I AM joining the Dark Side. After years of dicking around in the grey soup of
the Degobah System, I'm sticking my light saber as far up Yoda's ass as it'll go
and catching the next flight to the Darth Vader School of Better Living Through
Evil. I will not pass go, I don't want the 200 bucks. I just want to swear
fealty to the Dark Lord of the Sith, kiss the Emperor's ring, and get fitted for
my black respirator as soon as possible. As soon as I learn how to strangle
people from across the room, the other Jedi had better make travel plans. Dark
Lords of the Sith do not take prisoners.

For the smartasses whispering that I joined the dark side back in second grade
when I pushed Danny Smithson into the mud and he got pneumonia and no one ever
saw him again, I say: I hear the range on that choking trick is pretty far.

Rage, disappointment, boredom, disco: 1996 was a bloated alcoholic Bataan
Death-March of a year, convincing me at long last to open wide and accept evil
as my personal savior. Which brings me to my subject: sex. Specifically,
pornography. I can remember when pornography was a shadowy term that hinted at
all sorts of corrupt little pleasures, none of which I experienced on any kind
of basis. Those golden days are over, though, people, because now we have The
Internet. As far as I can tell, except for the various sports-oriented Web Sites
out there, The Internet is really just a big useless wasteland of pornography.

But I'm getting ahead of myself:

A few years ago while wasting a little time in college, a few friends and I
attempted to embarrass to death a lovely friend and confidant (who I keep
anonymous here because I have learned many things in the intervening years, one
of which is to fear the wrath of women) by purchasing for her, without her
knowledge, a pair of edible panties. Well, two pair, actually, although the
seond pair was consumed by Ken West and myself on the ride home (fruit roll-ups
by way of latex -ugh) and thus remains legend.

This was back in my halcyon days of grave credit card abuse, however, and so of
course the panties were charged. Ever since then I've gotten some rather strange
catalogues in the mail, as my credit info is passed on from one greasy outfit to
another. Some of the catalogues have been quite eye-opening, to say the least
-some have even been educational, in ways I'd rather not discuss. Mostly, it's
just been a little embarrassing.

But the look on her face was worth it, pigs. You ask me what keeps a bitter
scoundrel like me interested -that look of priceless shock, dismay, and fear is
part of it.

My overflowing mailbox o' smut begs the question, however: what's with this
pornography shit? This is what the first amendment is protecting -Latex Love
Dolls, "Buttman Goes to Panama", toys modeled on Jenna Jameson's vagina (in
living plastic!)? Can this kind of filth and degeneration and, and -and just
plain bad acting- be necessary and useful to a healthy society?

The answer, of course, is: yes.

If, as usual, you find yourself disagreeing with me, I have come prepared -allow
me to present to you the Official Inner Swine Top Ten Great Things about
Pornography. This includes all forms of pornography: printed, filmed, recorded,
digitized -imagined. If someone out there is masturbating to it, I'm referring
to it -although I am queasily aware that for some of you this includes old Smurf
cartoons.

THE INNER SWINE TOP TEN GREAT THINGS ABOUT PORNOGRAPHY (I Tried to come up with
10, but there just aren't that many)

1. Preservation of Society: I don't believe that pornography or its presence in
our society tolls the dying breaths of civilization; in fact, I believe the
opposite. I believe that pornography is a healthy aspect of any society, and its
continued presence in ours heartens me, for two key reasons the bluenosed morons
usually overlook: One, its presence and subsequent backwatering tells me that
there is still something in this world considered pornography, still something
considered so outrageously wrong or strange or sick that it must be labeled. In
the same way we need cursewords to be a special section of the language, a
special type of language that only loses its power and allure when overused, we
need pornography to be a special aspect of the intellectual and creative fields
(thats right I used those words with a straight face and I'll pop anyone in the
mouth who makes fun of me). If we no longer considered something pornography,
that's when to get upset and worried, because by that point there's nothing in
this culture considered beyond the pale. As long as we have that, as long as
there's something out there that while not strictly illegal is banished to the
backwaters of our culture, I have hope left for my weak-willed fellow humans,
whom I meet regularly while purchasing Swank magazine at Hudson News.

Two, let's face it, pornography provides a much-needed safety valve for the,
ahem, male half of the population. It's not our fault we have these raging sex
drives and harem fantasies, girls; only a few thousand years ago (or, in terms
of evoloution's perception of time: three seconds ago) we were hunter-gatherers
with an expected lifespan of maybe thirty, if we were especially quick. Not only
did we die young, but our women died young. In order to guarantee that our genes
got passed down, so that we might live forever, our cave man ancestors developed
a strikingly effective technique: they screwed everything that moved, and then
once more for good measure. This worked strikingly well until civilization was
born and suddenly it was no longer kosher to screw every female you saw whether
she was especially fond of you or not. Thus all the complicated rules and
regulations (and punishments) of civilized man turned mating into courtship and
for the past few thousand years we men have been forced to reign it in and try
our best not to be dirty cheating bastards.**

As all men know, and as many women will smugly agree, this is damned difficult.
It's not a lesser character or a species-wide personality defect, though, you
morons, it's just our nature fighting against the artifical imposition of
civilization, and sometimes the battle is a close one. So we have a safety
valve. Haunted by visions of your best friend's wife? Rent a movie, masturbate,
and tell no one.

2. Give women a legitimate reason to feel superior to us. Ho ho ho, sometimes my
girl friends amuse me so, especially when they gather together in their
Earth-Mother robes and smile indulgently when I try to say that men are no worse
than women, morals-wise and character-wise. Ah, but the argument that women are
just as swinish as men is another article (and one I think I've written several
times before) so then let's stick to the point: pornography serves a good
purpose in giving these poor chicks something concrete to point to, saying with
insane cheer that at least they don't rent dirty movies and touch themselves, at
least they don't support a multi-billion dollar flesh industry which branches
out to crack whores, demons, and, apparently, communists. And if it makes the
weaker sex feel better about supporting the multi-million dollar romance novel
industry, I say it must be a good thing.

3. Fake pictures: Scott Adams, who writes that funny funny Dilbert comic strip,
wrote a book about how he thinks the future will turn out. In this book, he
proposes that true Virtual Reality will be the last invention mankind produces,
since once we all have operational Holodecks in our homes we'll never leave
again, we'll just roll around our VR rooms screwing Claudia Schiffer or Fabio
until we die of starvation or maybe, more appropriately, de-hydration. This is
true. If you doubt me, take five minutes to really think about it and then come
back to this paragraph.

Well, the future is beginning on the internet, where one of my more eye-opening
discoveries recently is that you can find just about every celebrity you've ever
heard of, however obscure, naked. Now, I don't think some of these people ever
posed nude. I don't think some of these people ever remove their foundation
garments, for christ's sakes. But you can find nude pictures of them, because
they are faked.

Ah, but that's the boring part - Cindy Crawford's head pasted onto some coke
whore's body? Yawn. Even finding something like Hilary Rodham Clinton's head
morphed onto some slightly older coke whore's body isn't interesting for very
long, once the shock fades. What really amuses me is how creative some of these
people are. They don't just paste heads, my pigs, they create complete
scenarios, some erotic, some strange, some hilarious. These crude digital
artists are changing reality in their own small way, pigs, and they are the
pioneers of what will be the end of this sick, diseased society, and I applaud
them.

Yeah, and you can also find just about everybody out there. Somewhere, some
shut-in geek with a calloused hand has created a fake nude of even the most
unknown star (yes there are plenty of male fakes too, ladies -although I
wouldn't speculate as to the orientation of the artists, I must admit). Think of
some minor celebrity. Go ahead. Think back to the most boring cocktail party
you've ever been to, then isolate the dullest conversation you engaged in or
overheard from that party. Recall the name of the incredibly unknown actor or
model mentioned in it. As you pass out from re-lived boredom, gasping out the
name with a puzzled expression on your face, I'll bet you I can find a fake nude
of that person in 24 hours. 18 if you let Ken West help me.

4. If we didn't have pornography, how would we catch all the pedophiles? All you
hear about these days is how police departments all across America are nabbing
pedophiles trying to lure innocent teens (there's an interesting phrase) into
their sick dens of NAMBLA love. How do they do it? The internet, which basically
translates into pornography, as far as I can tell.

and, on the weirdo flip side of #4:

5. The education of eleven-year-olds everywhere. The funny thing about my sweet
earth-mother girl friends is that they want their Sabrett free from animal
by-products, so to speak, but they want gobs of mustard on that dog too. In
other words, they wrinkle their cute noses in distaste at the very thought of
men having sexual fantasies about something as wholesome and american as, say,
sheep, and run away in horror if we start discussing the ups and downs of the
venerable pornographic film series Swedish Erotica, but they want their men to
be James Bond in bed -in charge, in our element, and flawlessly prepared. In
other-other words, they expect us to be able to handle the clutch as well as the
gear shift.

I don't know about you, but the little birds and bees talk every parent is
supposed to have with their kids kind of went by the wayside in my youth. Or
else I passed out from terminal embarrassment and don't remember it. Who knows?
Point is, if I hadn't seen a few Vanessa Del Rio movies when I was a preteen, I
might not know how to do anything, and certainly wouldn't know how to do it
well. And I would submit without fear the proposal that even those of us lucky
enough to have been sat down by their parents and explained the fundamental
facts of sex were not then graduated to the more advanced courses
french-kissing, cunninglingus, or rubber implements. Without Ms. Del Rio and her
cohorts, where would we men be? That's right, at the mercy of women, which is
maybe right where they want us.

And for those of you who don't think the term rubber implements is ever going
have any practical concern for your life, I say: hey, you never know.

6. Providing jobs and livings for morons everywhere. One fact I doubt anyone
will argue is that the performers in your average pornographic endeavor aren't
very bright. We're talking well into the sub-human level of intelligence. Okay,
everyone needs to make a living. But if the only skill you can manage to pull
out of your ass to offer the job market is an instinct, something we're all born
to do -well, there's just something wrong with you. But thank god that an
industry exists for such people. I mean, would you want these yokels fondling
your fast-food or calling you at night on telemarketing cold-calls? I think not.

Of course, some of the porno actors did, at one time, have "real" careers. Nina
Hartley, who's been making skin flicks for about 75 years now, was once a
registered nurse. She gave up that glamorous life in order to pursue her true
passion: faking orgasms on screen. This, to me, is somehow worse than mere
stupidity. I mean, do we really want people who freely choose to be public
deviants fondling our fast food or calling us on telemarketing cold-calls? I
think even more not.

Without the gracious pornography industry, these dim bulbs would be forced to
undertake some other work, and would most likely end up in occupations similar
to their porno jobs anyway: crack whores. So if you think about it, Pornography
is directly responsible for keeping crazed hordes of crack whores off the
streets, where they would most likely hunt you down and slit your throat for
pocket change.

Remember: save a life, rent a porno.

7. Marriage Counseling for $3 a night. One of the more surprising things you
find out when you stick your nose into the seamy underbelly of pornography is
that one of the largest groups of renters in this world is couples. After all,
it's unreasonable to think that the fires of passion will burn forever without
fanning, and after a few years of watching your partner slowly expand and get
either hairier or balder, a few years in which your irritation at their various
foibles is allowed to ripen and bulge into a really disastrous purple rage, a
few years of getting a good look at what this formerly hot and tempting body's
gonna look like when they're fifty, well -after that it's kind of amazing that
anyone has sex after marriage, don't you think? Aside for breeding purposes, of
course. During the baby fever stage of any marriage the sex is often and easy,
but of course it's also very much like a job.

So what do burned out couples who are slowly learning to loathe each other to
do? Specificly, what do they do if they retain some semblance of love and
respect for each other through all the back-stabbing and insults? That's right,
they rent pornography. Why? For a number of reasons, apparently. As something a
little kinky to make sex fresh again. As a tutorial of nasty things they never
considered before. Maybe just as a shared experience they can get a hoot out of
-after all, maybe their sex life isn't so hot but at least they don't look like
the actors in the movies and don't bang like a couple of well-oiled robots, so
maybe their lackluster lovelife doesn't look so bad after a few viewings.

Of course, this can often result in middle-aged grown-ups wearing things and
doing things that make them patently ridiculous; all great things bring risk
with them. The point is, pornography isn't always about weirdo men in raincoats
skulking around movie theaters. Very often it's part of the glue that holds
America's immature couples as one, so they can grow miserable together.

Pornography, far from being a cancer eating away at our society, is often a
healthy and necessary outlet for the frustrated (albeit completely natural)
abundance of sexual energy shared by humans everywhere. Let's face it, if there
were no diseases, if pregnancy was voluntary, if there were no consequences at
all to sex besides uncomfortable breakfasts, we'd all probably be having sex as
casually as we say hello. Well, maybe not quite that casually, but pretty darn
casually, I think.

There is a difference, of course, between what I will ironically call
"mainstream" pornography and the fringe evil which also falls under that
umbrella term. As a Swine I enjoy wallowing in the dirt as much as anybody, but
there's always a line and anything that is harmful or evil in intent makes even
Swines run for cover. After all, one of the main characteristics of "mainstream"
pornography is that it's all pretty vapidly vanilla -one of the main features of
pornography is its inherent harmlessness. Harmlessness in the sense that the
participants, on both sides of the transaction, are voluntary and adult.

Because, when you think about the uninspired fantasies that pornography
regurgitates, you realize that the industry is not inventing new and destructive
filth -it's just using the same filth that's been around since the invention of
the cheerleader uniform. If there's evil in it, well then it's evil that we
dragged with us when we hotfooted it out of the Garden of Eden -nothing new,
nothing shocking, and nothing we don't carry around with us every day.

----------------------------------
* The guy who runs the web site I found this at had this to say about it: 
"It is interesting to speculate on the summit of man's creations. Is our 
supreme achievement the moon landing? Michelangelo's David?, the splitting 
of the atom? I cast my vote for our first fake of Bea Arthur. The little green 
men can blow us away now, we've done all we can, and all that can be done."

** A note to all the rabid feminists out there who like to tell me that all men
are potential rapists: fuck you. Your arrogance is breathtaking. All men are
potential rapists the same way all women are potential baby-killers -you
certainly don't see men putting their newborns in garbage cans. So shut up and
go back to petting your many cats. Thank you.

======================================== 
*** FICTION ***
TEN SHORT STORIES ABOUT THE INNER SWINE 
by Gus Pustule 
========================================

Editor's note: I originally envisioned twenty-five short stories in here, and
asked the usual goons to pen one or two really short pieces of fiction for me.
All of them failed to do so. Most even failed to look ashamed when I mentioned
their failure. As a result, these are written pretty much exclusively by yours
truly. I dislike everyone. You all suck.

1. Bea Arthur Blues

Everyone I show the new editorial to doubles over to vomit on the spot. I can
barely get the words "Well, what do you think?" out before they're on their
knees, retching. I show it to my lovely friend Lauren, hoping to get some
intelligent criticism from her, and she turns a dark shade of green and puffs
out her cheeks.

I glance over the first page and wonder if the grotesque picture has anything to
do with their reactions. It has no effect on me, but then I'm a fan of Bea
Arthur's.

I kneel down next to Lauren and cradle her sweaty, puke-crusted head. I rock her
gently, just like we used to back in detox. "Don't worry," I croon into her ear,
"you don't have to read it." She laboriously turns her head up to me, and grins,
and looking at her grinning at me like that I suddenly start to feel nauseous
myself.

Once her episode is over and she climbs shakily to her feet and begins fussing
with her hair and makeup, I perform a controlled experiment, showing the article
to her again but this time placing my thumb over the photo carefully. She reads
a few lines of my prose and is immediately down again, dry-heaving into the
gutter.

I put the article away, looking nervously around, and kneel down next to her
again. "Don't worry," I say again, "you don't have to read it."

2. An Interview with The Inner Swine

At a social gathering one night, after the furniture had been smashed up, the
glass swept up, and the injured tended to, I sat with Jeof Vita and Misty Quinn
outside and waited for the police. I carried a note from my uncle the police
officer in my wallet which usually got me out of any arrests, but Jeof and Misty
had no such relatives, so I was waiting with them in the spirit of friendship.
After all, if they got stuck with a pro bono lawyer it might be my last chance
to hang out with them without thick glass between us for a while.

Jeof had reached a state of intoxication a few hours before wherein nothing he
said made any immediate sense, leaving me to wait for Misty's eventual
translation. She had an uncanny ability to decipher his sweaty drunken ravings,
as long as he was kept still. To ensure this, we had Ken sit on him.

Jeof made a noise which sounded something like dead snails fucking, and after a
moment he put an arm around me, winking obscenely. I looked at Misty.

"He says we should interview you, and print the results in the next issue of
that piece of shit you call a magazine." she said sweetly. Then she frowned.
"Either that, or he said you have dishonored his people and he intends to cut
your genitals off in revenge."

I glanced back at Jeof, and he winked again. I shuddered involuntarily.

Jeof Vita: So, how did The Inner Swine get started?

TIS: (annoyed) What a stupid question. You were there, remember? In that
subterranean kitchen without windows or fresh air or hope four years ago? Oh,
sure, you were still recovering from that accident, trapped in the wheelchair
with all those tubes coming out of your mouth, staring rather rudely at me, and
I seem to remember hiding behind you and throwing my voice whenever anybody
asked you a question, but you were there.

JV: Yes, but for the benefit of your readers -

TIS: My readers? Bunch of dumb shits, they wouldn't have the mental wattage
between them to come up with that question.

JV: Humor us.

TIS: Fine. As you know I had been abusing the cleaning products under the sink
for some time and the resulting dependency had made me paranoid and photophobic,
not to mention almost constantly hallucinatory. I'd been sitting with Rob Gala
one night, smoking something, when we realized with a sort of religious epiphany
that we didn't have to wait until we sold something to some corporate magazine,
we could just create our own! I was energized with a sort of Little-Rascals
"let's put on a show" energy, and we recruited you to be in charge of the Art -

JV: And Ken West to be....what exactly was Ken, anyway?

TIS: Well, in all honesty we just wanted to use Ken's computer, his knowledge of
software, and the laser printers at his job. So we called him the Technology
Editor and everything would have worked out if I hadn't demanded that he write a
short article for us.

JV: Why did that ruin everything?

TIS: Are you trying to hurt me on purpose? Poor Ken...we forced him to write an
article about technological developments and that noble bastard managed to
squeeze out almost three pages of grammar-challenged prose before suffering what
appeared to be a breakdown of sorts. I blame you.

JV: Me? How is that my fault?

TIS: All right, we're all a little responsible. Ken's only good for watching
Spice Girl videos and couting his money, now. He'll never write again.

JV: Nor do we want him to.

TIS: Amen, brother. At any rate, after Ken's spectacular breakdown, there was a
period of confusion while I took control of the Zine through any means
necessary; there was some violence.

JV: Some? Rob Gala still lives under an assumed name three thousand miles away.
We all remember the purges.

TIS: This interview is in danger of being over.

JV: All right, all right.

TIS: At any rate, by late 1994 I had sole claim to the Zine, so I promptly put
my name in every article and tada! The Inner Swine was born! I toyed with
calling it The Inner Jeff Somers, but that seemed...crass, somehow. I settled
for writing every article.

JV: So, do you think you'll ever be brought up on charges for your crimes during
the Zine power struggle of 1993-1994? The Feds have lots of tapes on you, you
know.

TIS: This interview is over. And you can expect to get a visit from a few grim
Teamsters who never smile and have no names, you dig?

JV: But....but....you need me to draw your covers!

TIS: I'll tell them not to break your hands. Now get the hell out of here.

3. Baby Levon Rocks On at The DOT

The fucking New York City Police towed my car the day after Christmas and I
travelled to 38th street and 12th avenue to pay $150.00 to get it back. I wasn't
happy to be paying $150.00, but I wasn't in full-postal mode because it was just
after Christmas and I was resigned to the perpetual screwing the universe was
handing out to me on a daily basis anyway. Once you get resigned to the
screwing, as any prison bitch will tell you, it really stops bothering you.
That's pretty much the definition of resigned anyway.

So I wandered into the tiny, unwindowed, bunker-like DOT office on December 26th
and immediately read and comprehended a big 3X6 poster on the opposite wall
which explained the proper way to collect your car. It read:

1. REMOVE PANTS

2. BEND OVER AND PLACE PALMS FLAT AGAINST WALL

3. WHEN WE ARE SATISFIED WE WILL LET YOU KNOW

4. BE POLITE! IMPOLITE BASTARDS WILL BE CHASTISED WITH MORE SCREWING.

This seemed pretty straightforward to me, and I removed my pants immediately.
I'm used to going pantsless anyway. There were little outlines of hands on the
wall, showing you where to put your hands so you'd be in the proper position to
handle the stress and general wear-and-tear of a DOT screwing. I waited
patiently for my turn.

One guy however, had obviously not woken up to the sad fact of his general
powerlessness in the universe. He'd been at a far window (where the supervisor
sat in what appeared to be a gilded throne, eating wings from an endless bucket
of fried chicken) arguing when I'd walked in, and was ordered back against the
wall for the aforementioned MORE SCREWING as I took my own position. He wasn't
happy about this. He started making trouble, trying to cut in line and limit his
own screwing as much as possible. When the black guys at the front of the line
told him to take it like a man like the rest of us, words were exchanged, but
nothing I didn't see or hear at work every day so I wasn't alarmed even as
voices were raised.

And then, this woman wearing what appeared to be a dead cat on her head strolled
into the office with her two teenaged sons and immediately began to
hyperventilate.

"Oh my gawd!" she screeched in what I usually assume is a brooklyn accent even
though I am always wrong, "Let's not start a race war in he-yah! I don't want to
get shot!"

This did not sit well with the black men, who knew pretty well who she thought
might be packing heat in this scenario (hint: it wasn't me) and didn't like the
implications of that bit of stereotyping. Her two sons dropped dead of
embrassment right there, on the spot, and I must admit I spent the rest of this
adventure partially curious as to how long the DOT was going to leave two dead
bodies in the middle of the floor.

Now, I thought that the big 3X6 poster with its simple instructions was pretty
clear, but this lady had become disoriented and tried to cut in line as well to
get her screwing right away. The workers behind their hopefully bullet-proof
windows rolled their eyes and feigned seizures and pretended to not speak
english and claimed not to even work there and basically tried every trick in
the book to make this madwoman take her place and await her screwing like the
rest of us, but she would have none of it. The first guy, the guy who still
hadn't accepted the DOT as his personal higher power and started in on the
twelve steps to getting your wheels back, saw a partner in madness and they
started preaching to each other:

GUY: What a great city this is! LADY: HALLELUJAH! GUY: It's like Nazi Germany!
LADY: YOU TELL IT, BROTHER!

The rest of us, afraid to move for fear of getting MORE SCREWING and of being
noticed by these nutjobs (whose sight, like the T-Rex, is based on movement),
glanced at each other as bravely as you can when your pants are down around your
ankles and prayed silently for the hell to be over.

A few seconds later, the guy started singing "America the Beautiful" while the
lady asked us all if we were in the USA or communist Russia, which had, as
everyone knew, re-located to the New York City DOT under the gleeful care of
Mayor Rudy. The answer obvious, the brownshirts emerged from little rat tunnels
in the walls and dragged them, screaming, into the rank inner-levels of the DOT.

The rest of us breathed sighs of relief, relief which lasted about three
seconds, at which time we all remembered where we were, and that we each had
MORE SCREWING to look forward to.

4. Pigs on Ice: Hockey Stinks

I went to my very first Hockey Game in 1997. The unstoppable Misty S. Quinn and
Jeof Vita were big fans (she loves The New Jersey Devils so much she likes to
strip naked and paint herself in the team colors so she can attend the games
alfresco and not get busted, a major reason for my attendance that evening
-hubba hubba) and they needed a ride to the arena, so an invitation was born.
Being a little groggy from an evening of beer shooters and whippets, it took me
a few hours to realize that I was being used. By the time that moment of
epiphany hit me, we were already lost somewhere on Interstate 95, looking
desperately for an exit that at least looked near the Meadowlands.

The first thing that struck me was how small the damned arena was. I'm used to
cathedral-like baseball stadiums, where fifty thousand people have room to
stretch out and there's that huge expanse of empty space where the players
gambol. A hockey arena is like attending some big meeting, probably a KKK
convention since, with the exceptions of Jeof and Ken, the spectators were as
lily-white and pale as me and Misty. A sea of flannel, workboots, and
beer-flushed faces as far as the eye could see. Noticing the heroic beer-intake
and the general surliness of the crowd, I began to check the exits.

Misty and Jeof seemed to be watching me carefully for that magical moment when
my caucasion genes kicked in and my instinctual love for hockey manifested
itself. It never happened. Hockey still seems like a bunch of surly guys pushing
and shoving and skating around aimlessly. Every now and then the puck will get
kicked into a net seemingly by accident and everyone in the place is so amazed
they go nuts; bells go off, music plays, a red light starts flashing, and the
people cheer as they stagger to get their little kids more beer.

That's the image I took away from my first (and hopefully last) hockey game:
grown people feeding their little ones beer. It had never occured to me that the
intensive physical training required of a hockey player began so early. From
watching the game, I assume its a way of generating the brutal levels of rage
required for hockey; after an adolescence of alcoholic neglect, I guess you're
ready to start skating for the puck -and you've probably lost all your teeth
anyway.

5. Rob Gala On the Run in Seattle

He has super-charged heroin-eyes that can look thirty-six directions at once.
He's memorized the collected works of David Foster Wallace and recites the prose
under his breath at all times. He has studied the deadly skills of the
Scandanavian Martial Art Halitosis and can kill at a hundred yards. He eats bark
stripped from Birch trees and shits out roots. He has made himself impervious to
most recreational drugs and many conventional poisons through years of laborious
ingestation.

He can run for hours without stopping and has used electrolosis to remove most
of his sweat glands so he no longer perspires -though this causes his body
temperature to rise dangerously and he glows redly like a small human sun after
physical exertion. He hugs trees daily, often for hours at a time, and takes
home great peace and joy from this simple action. He becomes fascinated with
televisions on display in store windows because there is no sound and they are
always tuned into the most boring and inexplicable channels. He indulges in
public displays of his bodily functions precisely because he knows most people
wish he wouldn't. He has over the years fine-tuned his body and mind into a
deadly weapon and inexhaustible resource, preparing for the day that The Inner
Swine Inner Circle comes after him.

He can store food in his cheeks for several days if necessary. He has trained
himself to sleep with his eyes open, wide and staring, almost bugging. He can
wake up at any time of night simply by repeating the time to himself as he falls
asleep, a trick he read about in the James Bond novel MoonRaker by Ian Fleming.
He often uses Ian Fleming as a psuedonym when signing into hotels or at wakes.
He can let his beard grow and wear Hemp pants and look like a stoner dead-head.
He can snip his nose hair and wear a suit and slick back his hair and look like
a lawyer. He often changes from one look to another in the course of a day when
trying to throw off suspicious men and women who might be agents of The Inner
Swine, trying to bring him back to the Editorial Offices in New York. He knows
as well as anyone that there is no "out". They might ignore you for a few years,
but everyone is brought back, eventually.

He has memorized the public transportation schedules and can make it across
Seattle in fourteen minutes if motivated to do so. Once a month he tests this
out, just in case. He knows of thirty-one public bathrooms he could gain access
to at any given time. He has bank accounts and apartments available to him
throughout the west coast. He maintains three wives and families in three
separate cities in Washington, Oregon, and California. His wives all know him by
the name "Rupert". He has an old yellow schoolbus hidden in the woods just
outside the city, gassed up and with false papers under the driver-side
sun-guard. He works nights at a gas station three nights a week under the name
"Alan" in case he ever needs to continue working while underground. He votes six
times in every election under different identities, in case the New York
organization uses voting records to trace him, to bring him back to the
organization he helped to found, and then fled.

He sings interpretive jazz and scat at various underground bars in the Seattle
area under the name Blind Willie Lime. He has convinced many of the patrons of
these bars that he is a light-skinned black man, and that he is blind. He does
this by wearing sunglasses and moving slowly, and by speaking in what he
believes is an accurately ethnic Louisiana accent. Once a month he travels to
Mexico City to mule six pounds of uncut Columbian cocaine into California, for
which he is paid handsomely in cash of various denominations which he stashes in
safe boxes along the small towns of the west coast. He has booby-trapped these
strongboxes with various ingenius and deadly traps. He has forgotten the exact
nature of several of these strong-boxes and has not opened them in years, afraid
of killing himself, or losing a hand. Sometimes, when prowling singles bars
looking for alibis he gets a little drunk on Dirty Martinis and starts
introducing himself as Huey Lewis, the eighties rock star. He is surprised at
the percentage of success he has with this lie. He has superhuman powers of
nasal inhalation but doesn't know it.

In a few years he plans to move out of his apartment at midnight, without
alerting anyone, and steal away to Canada, where he yearns to make a living as a
Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, mistakenly believeing that the Mounties still
ride horses, which they have not since 1977. He believes he will find peace
there, in his red uniform and on his valiant steed. If anyone knew of this dream
and his feelings for it, doubtless they would not disillusion him for fear of
breaking his heart. He dares not move to Canada until he is sure that The Inner
Swine Inner Circle is no longer after him. He calculates he will be forty-three
by the time he is sure of this. He fears this will make him too old to be a
Mountie. and he lays awake at night chewing his lips in worry. Sometimes he gets
up on these nights and quickly drinks two fingers of bourbon, to calm himself
and to force sleep on himself. This works, but he usually wakes with a headache.

Every few months a new issue of The Inner Swine arrives, and he sits in the dark
of the special room upstairs with the envelope in his lap. The special room has
had the windows blacked out and all other cracks that light might enter or exit
through covered up. At night he can sit there with a small reading lamp switched
on and from the outside it would appear as if the house were deserted, or
asleep. He sits with this small reading lamp (the faux-banker kind, with a green
shade) and stares at the Inner Swine envelope in fear, sweating as much as he
can with his burned-out sweat glands, wondering if this will be the issue that
warns that The Inner Swine Inner Circle is coming after him. He knows they will
warn him. They would wish to torture him, first. He sometimes pretends he will
not open the envelope, that he will refuse to let them affect him even from so
far away. He always abandones this plan, and opens the envelope.

He scans the issue feverishly, looking for clues. He knows they will not be
blatant. He knows there will be hints, subtle signs, coded warnings. He knows
that he still has allies in The Inner Swine Inner Circle, allies who are
powerless to help him but who would see him escape. He hopes that they will
contrive to warn him when the action is taken. He underlines what he feels are
significant passages in the issue and then hides it, carefully. He is afraid
that agents of The Inner Swine may see the issue lying on a coffeetable or in a
bathroom and connect him with the errant founding member who ran.

He struggles against paranoia while realizing that paranoia is all that will
keep him alive and free.

6. Your Editor Struggles Against the Implacable Mathematics of Chess

Jeof Vita likes to bring the warrior spirit to chess. Now chess, contrary to
popular belief, isn't a nice sedate game, really. The former World Champion
Emanuel Lasker described chess as a "fight". The game is based on war, after
all, even if it is war the way it was in the year 1200.

Still, the fact that Jeof likes to paint his face and wear unruly animal skins
when we sit down to play always makes me feel a little silly, and the way he
likes to run around the room whooping whenever he captures a piece is downright
irritating. And the fact that he alludes to my lack of balls or manliness every
time I decline to make an aggressive move makes me feel like slapping the
bastard -but I don't. I don't because if I did he would beat me up.

Jeof likes to make piddling little pawn moves and I like to leave the poor pawns
where they are. Jeof gets impatient and sometimes makes reckless moves. He also
likes to cry out "FIRST BLOOD IS MINE!" when he gets to capture the first piece.
I like to say cryptic things like "Watch out for that hanging pawn or fifteen
moves down the line you're gonna lose a tempo." Jeof sometimes exchanges the
Queens for no apparent reason, leading me to believe he has some sort of weird
Queen fetish I'd rather not discuss. I sometimes get carried away and starting
speaking in little voices I've made up for all my pieces, saying things like
"Avast, ye Bishops!" or "Mount up, brave Knights!" Jeof politely ignores this.

In this game I am marching to an inevitable victory because Jeof has
thoughtlessly sacrificed a knight too soon leaving me with a material advantage
he can't surmount. My forces march forward, isolating his King and forcing more
sacrifices on his part. His remaining Rook and his Queen sit on the board
uselessly, powerless. He is reduced to shuffling his pawns around as obstacles,
hoping that I'll go suddenly blind or have a stroke and give away a piece or
two. I am about seven moves away from eating him alive.

And then, I get distracted by a game of Trivial Pursuit, the exact opposite of
chess (Chess requiring tactics and knowledge and planning and Trivial Pursuit
requiring nothing more than a photographic memory of every TV show you've ever
seen) and Jeof mates me in three moves that I should have laughed at.

As he jumps around the room beating his chest and pissing on the furniture to
mark his territory, I can only stare dumbly. I go on to win the game of Trivial
Pursuit. As usual, I have no idea what any of this means.

7. Public Transportation Means Never Having to  Say You're Sorry

I have learned to love buses.

There is a certain eerie eternity about buses, about their ponderous movements
and slow, wide turns. Buses exist only in extremity: they are either crowded and
frantic or empty and lazy. You're either running for one like the track star you
could have been, squeezed like a sardine, and spewed out into the working world
with any meager good morning cheer squeezed out of you ruthlessly, or you're
sitting all the way in the back, the only person riding aside from an old lady
clutching her immense pocketbook in mortal fear, watching the night slip by
endlessly. As time goes on and your ability to stay up late weakens with age,
you find you only know morning buses, which are unhappy buses. You only know the
paltry thrill of discovering a nearly empty bus and finally getting a seat, or
the sinking feeling of watching the third bus in a row pass you by with pale,
crushed faces pressed against the glass as if they were saying help us, we're
trapped. The pale, crushed faces never look happy, yet you wish you were one of
them. To ride a bus is to desire discomfort, to often as not pray for
discomfort. What joy!

I have been riding buses all my life, or at least since I was fourteen, when I
started a high school which was two buses away. It was then that I first learned
of the joy of the monthly pass, the thrill of the transfer slip. Ah, those were
the days. Waiting in the freezing cold, dropping change on the floor of the bus,
crawling amidst the seats trying to locate that dime that got lost. When I went
to college, I chose the largest university this side of Life, and we needed to
ride buses from campus to campus, at least until we were juniors and were
allowed to have a car. In college I learned about the sadness of the 2AM bus,
the last bus home, the bus you always missed because when you're drunk at 2AM
time seems to go very slowly for a very long time and then suddenly leap forward
forty minutes. I also learned, not through personal experience but through
horrified observation, that it is never a good idea to get sick on a bus. The
logistics are against you.

Now, I ride the bus to work every day, mainly so I can publish this zine without
incurring any sort of financial burden. By riding my bus, I get my company to
pick up all manner of Inner Swine expenses: paper, copying, computer time,
postage -whatever.

The only problem? My bus line is run by madmen and morons. The one time I
requested a schedule from my bus company, I received a hearty laugh until the
dispatcher saw that I was serious. Then he apologized and explained that the
buses just move as fast as they can and do not attempt to stick to any fixed
schedule. Thus I have attuned my life cycle to the bus: if I am still standing
in my room in my underwear with a piece of toast in my mouth and two unmatched
socks in my hands, I know the bus is rounding the corner. If I am dressed and
ready to go, the bus has been and gone and I will wait forty minutes in the cold
for the next one, which will be too crowded to take me. You must employ zen
technique to catch my bus, you must pray to odd idols and listen to clues the
cosmos sends you. In short, you must go directly against every instinct you have
ever felt. You must show up at the bus stop at ridiculous moments when no bus
should be passing by, you must rush when you have plenty of time and dawdle when
you're already late.

The drivers drive like retired cabbies who learned to handle something the size
of a bus by studying theory, that is, they drive the bus as if they've never
driven one before, constantly amazed that the bus won't fit through this or
under that. They also hate the little vans that have sprung up to compete with
them along the route, and will gleefully postpone large sections of the route if
given the chance to cut off, damage, or otherwise inconvenience one of these
vans. It is a good idea to strap yourself in once on the bus, as our homicidal
drivers like to hit their breaks often and hard, as if patently lacking faith in
their ability to stop the bus. They will usually offer no warnings or apologies,
and I think I once caught one of them grinning like a hyena in the rear view
after making some old ladies stumble around a bit.

This reminds me of The Politics of Seating. I was taught long ago to give up my
seat to those who might need it more than me. As I have aged, this list has
grown shorter and shorter, so now you have to either have no legs or insist on
staring at me balefully in a steady, obsessive manner to get me to give up my
seat. I inevitably lose such staring contests, since I certainly don't need the
seat. I used to try to avoid the confrontation altogether by not sitting down at
all, but I always chose to employ this tactic on a day when traffic was light,
and I would always end up standing on a bus when there were about a half dozen
empty seats left. Everyone would stare at me until I burst into flames, or
perhaps that was only my imagination. The next day I would sit down forcefully
and vow to never get up again, and inevitably a crippled nun would end up
standing in front of me, staring at me with the wrath of god.

The best part, of course, comes when you arrive in New York City. There is one
crazy bus driver who likes to go off on wild goose chases the moment he is out
of the tunnel, driving around for an extra fifteen minutes while we sit,
mystified, wondering if it would be possible to overcome him physically and take
control of the bus. Others like to creep along the entry ramps to the Port
Authority as if they'd been taking downers all day and things were going just a
little too fast for them that morning. One likes to shout out "Well, we made it
again!" when he opens the doors, which leads me to wonder how many of his buses
haven't made it. And since all you have to look forward to is getting on another
bus to try and get home later in the day, you can't help but wonder if maybe you
should just cut out the middle man and not get off.

8. Ken West, Master of His Domain

When Ken started publishing digitally altered photos of all on his web page, we
knew the time had come to take action.

Jeof had been the first to discover it, and it had taken him almost two weeks to
alert the rest of The Inner Swine Inner Circle because, in his words, he'd
thought his picture was quite flattering. We all knew that Jeof had long wished
he'd been born a Japanese girl instead of a Filipino boy, so we excused him on
this one -besides, it was too easy to make Jeof cry these days. Ever since he'd
started dating Misty his hormonal imbalances had only increased; we were
powerless and could only shoot each other pitying looks behind his back.

Once we'd been alerted, we all ran to our computers to boot up Ken's web page:
WWW.HotButteredUglyWhite-People.Com. We were horrified to find that from his
secure underground bunker, Ken had created digital pictorials for us all, each
reflecting his demented world view. I had been done in a sort of Farrah Fawcett
tribute which had resulted in one of the most repellent images I'd ever seen in
my entire life :

I didn't even get to view the other photos; once I emerged from the bathroom I
was too weakened from vomiting to look at the rest.

I called an emergency meeting of The Inner Swine Inner Circle Special Forces
Committee and a plan of action was quickly drawn up: the Web Page's server had
to be shut down, obviously, but this wasn't going to be easy. Ken was virtually
impregnable in his underground bunker (which had no running water for showers
-one reason it was impregnable) and there was only one way in: through the sewer
system.

Misty was the only one of us who owned her own scuba equipment, so we zipped her
into her wet suit and drove her to the nearest water processing plant, where she
swam up one of the outlet pipes that eventually led into the underground lagoon
in Ken's bunker. Wishing Misty the best in her dangerous mission, the rest of us
camped out on the concrete shore of the Processing Plant and enjoyed a sumptuous
picnic of pasta and beer until we passed out and were later arrested for
trespassing.

Meanwhile, Misty successfully penetrated Ken's perimeter defenses using a
dangerous combination of her feminine wiles and the nonconductive qualities of
her scuba suit. Distracting Ken with a bogus phone call from his hero Pee Wee
Herman, she replaced the horrifying JPEGS with harmless digitized photos of
herself making baloney sandwiches in her kitchen. Sadly, while making her escape
she became confused and swam to Connecticut, where she was arrested for public
nudity upon emerging from the water and shedding her uncomfortably tight scuba
suit. Hearing this sad news from our respective county jail cells, The Inner
Swine Inner Circle vowed to call another emergency meeting as soon as we posted
bail.

9. Teaching the World Too Much Joy, One Unwilling Participant at a Time

It happened when I was eighteen years old, on the first sober day I'd
experienced at college since arriving there months before. I wasn't sure what to
do with my time, really; I thought perhaps I'd take in a class and see what
those strange group meetings were all about, I thought maybe I'd eat something
for a change (food just makes me sick), I thought maybe I'd shower. Then, some
music, a few phone calls returned after some weeks, and maybe find out if anyone
wanted to go out and have a few drinks.

In this amiably sober mood, I turned on the radio, and heard a song that made me
pause and listen, standing in my dorm room rather autistically, with my head
cocked, a slightly dopey smile on my face, and my right hand rubbing my stomach
in a suggestive manner I'd rather not get into. The song was "That's a Lie" by
Too Much Joy, and it was the first time I'd ever heard anything by the band. I
was blown away. I didn't know anything about the song, its history, or about the
band and it's history. I've never been cool and rarely have the inside dirt on
things, so I missed some of the irony of the song. So what? It rocked.

The next day, I dug up Son of Sam I Am and so began my secret life as a TMJ fan.
For a while I thought I was alone in the world (well, obviously, someone was
making the tapes, but for all I knew that involved Elves), but now I know
better: the world is full of Too Much Joy fans. The problem is, while the world
is full of them, New Jersey does not seem to be. And even if it was I doubt I'd
care, since I tend to dislike new people just about sight, even if they are
wearing the same T-shirt as I am. Especially if they're wearing the same T-shirt
as me.

My solution? Get the friends I already have into TMJ as well, so we can all go
to the shows together. I have two reasons for wanting this kind of love in my
life: one, it would give me people to come with me to TMJ shows and act as human
shields against all the other people going to TMJ shows, and two, it would
increase my chances of having my tickets and my drinks bought for me. As it
stands, my chances of either are patently zero. The more friends I inspire to
become big Too Much Joy fans, the safer I am.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think everyone in this world has a dignity and
deserves respect. I just often fervently believe that I ought to be respecting
them from a distance. Let's face it: I don't like people very much. I hate
forcing conversation just so we don't wilt in silence, I hate pressuring myself
into agreeing to commitments just so I can feel like an okay person, I hate
being polite and I hate wasting everybody's time. I am trying desperately to
keep this from translating into me hating everyone I meet instantly, but it's
hard; it's hard because, let's face it, I do hate everyone almost instantly.

Sigh. I'm an asshole. I admit it.

But, I digress...One of my main passions these past five or six years has been
to drag my friends to Too Much Joy shows and then stare at them in popeyed
disbelief when it fails to change their lives. I am convinced that this is
simply due to extraneous circumstances and that someday there will be a harmonic
convergence of booze, celestial gravity, and the TMJ Theme Song and everyone I
know will join hands and be instantly be sucked up into heaven, our work here
done...or perhaps simply buy me drinks all night, which would be pretty cool,
too. The closest we ever got was Hoboken...but I am getting ahead of myself.

The first time I tried this, I could only convince Ken West to come with me,
which was good, because I had no money and without Ken it would have been a slow
night. He spotted me several whiskeys in soda, however (most probably to shut me
up) and I rewarded him by jumping all over him at Irving Plaza and screaming
into his ear like a little girl. At least that's what I was doing when I wasn't
unknowingly flirting with underage chicks with emotional problems...but that's a
completely different story (Ed. Note: See "My Eventual Stalker", TIS 3(3) page
47).

This was the period of time between the release of "Mutiny" and the release of
"...Finally", a nightmarish time for TMJ fans. I was one of perhaps thirty
people who showed up to see TMJ, but who cared? They played "Seasons in the Sun"
right before I passed out, and that was all that really mattered. Ken enjoyed
himself, but there weren't enough people around us to really have one of those
epiphany moments I was after. Still, the seeds were planted.

The next time I made my attempt TMJ came back to New York City to play at Coney
Island High, which is a small punk-as-fuck club in The Village. This time, I
convinced a bunch of people to come: Ken, Misty, Jeof, and Lauren. This was
right around the time of "...Finally"'s release, so I was understandably
excited, but my grand plans for a Heaven's Gate sort of religious experience
with my friends were not to be. We were hampered at the time by a high level of
drama bubbling around us at any given moment: I will not bore you with our
sub-90210 details, but let's just say that two of us ended up sleeping together
and the rest, sadly, did not. More I cannot say.

We enjoyed the show, and afterward the girls stole posters off the walls for me
while I interrogated everyone about the show. Tim Quirk stood near us for a
while and everyone kept nudging me to go talk to him, but I always ponder the
wisdom of this: I don't like anyone, no one likes me in turn, why would this guy
want me sticking a sweaty hand in his and telling him I liked the show or
something inane like that? Besides, by this point I was hungry for the buffet of
anger and recrimination our early mornings usually turned out to be at that
time, and hurried us out to get the arguments going.

Not long afterward, Too Much Joy was slated to play some bizarre street festival
in Hoboken, and I made plans with every single person I liked well enough not to
attack physically to show up. Most of them did. We gathered on a hill by the
courthouse and watched the show in high spirits, dancing and singing and
eventually linking arms and swaying back and forth and singing the Theme
Song...it seemed for a moment that the skies would open up and rain beer down
upon us and Tim might speak to us from the stage and grant us wisdom, but
nothing happened except Tommy pointed to us with his drumsticks and we cheered
loudly and then went hunting for Italian Sausage vendors.

Later on, I pondered the fact that I had failed so often to bring true Joy into
my friend's lives. They had enjoyed the shows, sure, but none of them seemed to
really understand. I sat with Ken in my kitchen eating Rum Raisin ice cream and
picturing what it was going to look like when I threw it up later, and Ken could
only shake his head sadly and tell me it was for the better: because of my
natural tendency to dislike people, having all my friends become big TMJ fans
would force me to abandon the Joy Boys in order to distance myself from my
friends. Sad, really. Next time maybe I'll stand in the middle of the mosh pit
and scream "TOO MUCH FUCKING JOY!" over and over again until they have security
remove me, and screw this love shit.

10. A Short Postscript About Pearl Jam

Yield, Pearl jam's fourth album, just came out as I write this, in February of
1998. I like the three or four songs I've heard on the radio and I was so
excited by the fact that I actually like Pearl Jam songs, I thought I'd buy the
album when it came out.

I have been plagued with a complete disregard for Pearl Jam since they hit the
collective consciousness back in 1991, when all the white kids from Seattle went
a little nuts. I mean, I'm a white twenty-something rock-n-roll kid who really
got excited about Nirvana -why wouldn't I like Pearl Jam? They were, apparently,
the voice and conscience of my generation. Bullshit, of course, but hey -I once
believed that Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister really just lived in that makeup,
like in his normal life, you know? I'm usually gullible.

Pearl Jam, on the other hand, never quite lit my fires. They always seemed a
little dull. All that introspection, all those supposedly deep lyrics, uttered
in Eddie Vedder's sleep-inducing baritone. I have to be honest, I never cared
what Jeremy said in class yesterday, I never wanted to meet the elderly woman
behind the counter, get me? Pearl Jam spoke to me about as much as Phillip
Glass.

Oh, I liked a few songs, one or two especially well. Yellow Leadbetter and
Corduroy I like fine. I even went to see the bastards in concert back in '96. It
was a fun show. I got kicked in the head.

But I'd never cared enough to go out and buy an album, never cared enough to
anticipate them the way I anticipate Too Much Joy or Liz Phair or The
Descendents. But this time around I was digging the songs and I thought, hey,
why not? If the songs rock, why not buy the album? I bought the last AC/DC album
for less reason. I regret that every day, baby, but I believe there is a certain
grace in not learning from your mistakes, you know? So I decided I would
purchase Yield. I would finally join my flanneled brethren and listen to Eddie's
muffled, tortured thoughts in the privacy of my own home.

I went in the Virgin Megatstore to buy it, only $7.49 -a bargain to boot. I
picked it up and wandered to the magazine rack, and that's where it all fell
apart. Every magazine was doing a story on Pearl Jam, on how they were the last
great rock band, about how good the new album was, about how relieved everyone
was that the new album hadn't been a big suckfest like No Code. It was like
jesus had come back in the form of a rock band. It was like they were an
institution or something. It was depressing.

Suddenly I didn't feel like I was buying rock and roll, like I was buying a
piece of a band that spoke to me. I felt like a cog in the machine called The
American Buying Public, a consumer, and I didn't like it, babies. I didn't like
feeling like I was an insignificant detail in the great Pearl Jam story, like I
was part of the soft news story being written about them, their "legend" and
their continuing popularity despite the changing tides of music in America. I
resented feeling like I was just one of a million motherfuckers buying Yield
that day. A million motherfuckers who were expected to buy Yield that day.

So I didn't. I bought G-Love and Special Sauce instead, because G-Love can use
the sales, pigs. I felt better, suddenly. I walked out whistling and even the
fact that G-Love's album ain't that great didn't ruin me. Let the other one
million morons in this country buy Yield. This idiot's gonna remain on the
fringe.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY *** 
American Wedding Confidential #4:
It's My Scene, Man, and It Freaks Me Out! 
========================================

THE best types of weddings to get invited to, the uninhibited bachelor soon
realizes, is one where you're no longer very close with the person or persons
inviting you. Obviously some remnant of affection or intimacy or whatever
remains to get you invited in the first place, but if his first response to the
invitation is surprise, the enterprising bachelor knows he's onto something.

When my friend Deidre (not her real name) invited me to her wedding, it was
perfect. I was not close enough to be intimately involved with the plans, had
met the groom once (and that in a crowded smoky place where I was pretty sure he
would never remember me from) and knew only a limited number of her other close
friends. The reason this was exciting was simple: weddings are filled with
drunken, relaxed women in tight, revealing but uncomfortable clothes who have
been whipped up into a mating frenzy by the sheer romance and primal proceative
mood of the ceremony. After a few too many glasses of white wine and just the
right number of love songs, any man with no perceivable limps or skin diseases
starts to look attractive, as long as he seems like marriage-material.

"Marriage Material" is a tricky term which means, basically, that there is no
reason the poor slob couldn't be goaded into exchanging vows should a
relationship blossom and the idea of living with him and bearing his children
not bring images of prescription drugs dancing into the poor gal's head. Not all
men fall into this category, for a variety of reasons: the limps and skin
diseases mentioned above, an existing marriage, baleful personality, halitosis,
and an alarmingly long list of character defects that range from a wandering
dick to an inability to stand up to her father. The exact prerequisites of
"Marriage-Material" vary from girl to girl, and are difficult to pin down, but
every lean and hungry bachelor knows that he has to look it to have any chance
of being the real Best Man of the reception.

There are two ways to acquire this mysterious veneer.

The first is to do whatever is necessary to appear honestly distressed at your
single status, to achieve a delicate balance of machismo and sensitivity, to try
and project the sort of manly sadness stemming from your loneliness that will
set women's hearts a-pounding and knees a-melting and make you look like the
third-rate Chris O'Donnel sensitive hunk you know you could be.

The other, more attractive to the lazy amongst us bachelors, is simply to show
up with a good Trophy Date and not tell anyone she's your platonic friend or
your best friend's sister or your cousin Ruth. Because the one true law of
"Marriage Material" is that if some other woman is willing to appear in public
as your girlfriend, you must be it.

I asked my gorgeous friend and confidant Misty S. Quinn to be my trophy date for
this one, for a variety of reasons: she can drink like a sailor, she's a good
choice of people to talk to for hours and hours, and she's good-looking enough
to blind when the mood takes her to wear skintight black evening dresses. Also,
since Misty regards my own libido as an amusing if unimportant detail of my
existence, there was no chance of me losing sight of my real objectives and
getting distracted. She was perfect for Trophy Date status.

I was ready. With the lovely Ms. Quinn on my arm and my own dashing lack of any
discernable deformities, I knew I had Marriage-Material stamped on my forehead.

And then, we got lost.

And I mean, lost. We got lost on the way to the ceremony, although not too
badly, and managed to sneak in with only a deafening-amount of squeaking hinges
and muffled giggles. Then we got lost on the way to the reception, in a big way.
Well, in all honesty I should say that I got lost. Misty just sort of sat in the
front seat staring out the window in a saintly display of tolerance. But then
Misty's known me for years now and if she hasn't come to terms with my general
incompetence by now then she never will.

Being lost in New Jersey, however, means never being too far away from a major
highway, and we did make it to the last half hour of the cocktail hour after
being on the road for almost four hours. We were starving, and all the food had
been gnawed down to the bones by the other guests, who resembled army-ants or
pirahnas in their greasy-lipped frenzy. I settled for a stiff cocktail and some
sushi, while Misty trembled and wept because all the good foods had been
devoured. I held her gently in my arms as she cried, forlorn at the lost hors
devoures.

At the actual reception, we were both so burned from the ride down that it took
many glasses of liquor before we felt relaxed enough to enjoy ourselves, and by
then I suppose I had lost my appetite for meaningless romantic entanglements
with booze-flushed floozies in the coat room. Besides, my pickings were slim:
the women at our table (the official "old friends we don't know what to do with"
table) were vague little soroity moppets more interested in discussing the
details of every wedding they'd ever seen, heard of, or imagined in their narrow
lives, and none of the other women were drinking enough. So I settled in, talked
to Misty, snuck out with her to watch Game 4 of the World Series on the Hotel
Lounge TV, and eventually got shit-faced enough to dance.

And there my careful veneer of Marriage-Material vanished, like ice on a July
afternoon.

Dancing is not a male activity. Men who dance well are not men (although men who
avoid dancing are cowards) and so most of us flail about with an unseemly
awkward motion, endangering our friends and dates and ruining our cool
exteriors. In self-defense, most sensible men have adopted a sedate white-man's
overbite type of dancing that is neither exciting nor embarrassing, it is simply
dull. Not me. In my self-defense, I get as goofy as I can, dancing as if I were
in a Bill Murray movie. I make my dancing into a big joke. This is fine if
you're dancing in front of good friends who already don't respect you, but in
front of strangers...sometimes it is a mistake. I am the Elaine Bennis of Male
Pattern Dancing.

It didn't matter, really; we had a good time and made it up to our room after
several hours of dancing had sweated all the alcohol out of my body. Luckily, I
was too tired to be humiliated and hit the sheets immediately upon entering the
room. Misty unfortunately changed into frumpy sweatpants and a T-shirt, and the
next day I happily drank coffee, clogged the tub drain, and ate a complimentary
breakfast of greasy sausages and buttery eggs...

...and promptly got lost on the way home. Misty, tired of all this bullshit
finally took charge and directed me home. As I dropped her off I considered the
whole night to have been a rousing success, even if I had wasted a great Trophy
Date opportunity. Oh well, one thing I know in this crazy life: there is always
another wedding waiting for me.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
CYBEROTICA A Guy's Guide to Smut-Hunting on the Internet 
by Jeof Vita[1]
========================================

Thanks to Jeff, the image of Bea Arthur, naked and spread eagled, showing of all
of her digitally manipulated glory is forever burned into my mind.

Oh, there will be retribution ... swift and total.

In any case, that pic is easily the most vile thing I have ever seen. So let's
all ask this question together, "Why would Jeff be consciously looking for a
naked pic of Bea Arthur?" Sure, he'll tell you, "I was just looking around for
something to put on top of my article and this came up." I for one do not buy
it. People don't just happen upon a pic of Bea. In fact, people on a net
"smut-hunt" usually know exactly what they're looking for and exactly where to
get it.[2]

But for those of you who aren't in the know: the following is a simple guide to
setting the right mood, picking the right music, and getting yourself all geared
up for a night alone, in front of your computer, surfing the net for the best
smut it has to offer.

So, gentlemen (and yes this article is for the men only since it is a fact that
there are no actual women who use the internet[3], and for those of you who
think you are chatting with women ... one word: transgendered) this is the
scenario:

Friday night comes crashing down on you like a ton of bricks, and there you are
in your apartment ... alone. Why? Either your girlfriend has chosen to spend the
night with other, more interesting people or, as is more likely, you do not have
a girlfriend. Your "friends" have all congregated at some designated location
that no one happened to share with you, while your family went on a trip to
Bermuda, forgetting to offer you a ticket. Plus, since the stray cat you adopted
has found another, no doubt warmer, transient cat home to visit, you are really
and truly, utterly alone.[4]

Dressed in floppy boxer shorts held up only by a stray shoelace, socks that once
long ago gripped your ankles with fervent tenacity, now reduced to nothing more
than "foot skirts", a t-shirt and your favorite flannel robe ... what else does
your mind turn to in these moments? Sex.[5]

Hmmm, but where to get it.

Option #1: You could rent a good, low grade, high raunch porno movie. Given the
situation it doesn't even have to be a movie. In fact, with a little searching,
you could get one of those 4 hour tapes filled with just the juicy parts. But,
just when all your good parts start to tingle, you remember that your
paperweight of a VCR can only show a viewable image if you run it in fast
forward plus all sound is reduced to a barely decipherable garble. Scratch the
porno.

Option #2: Porno mag. Preferably not the airbrushed, soft glow type either. You
want the hard core stuff that reduces women to nothing more than a few choice
body parts. And of course you want those body parts in extreme close-up![6]
Where to go, where to go ... there must be a newsstand open somewhere. For a
brief moment, you think about heading down to the train station because you know
those newsstands are open all night! Then you reconsider. Local newsstand will
do. Now to get money. Good filth does cost dearly after all. Oh yeah, there's
that tingle again! Wait a minute .. . money? Oh no. The sudden realization
begins to creep in and choke you until all you can muster is a whiny gasp. You
have all of $2.37 to your name.[7] You can't even get a dirty comic book for
that money. Scratch the mag.

Option #3: Phone sex. Not the most acceptable solution but what the hell. A
quick flip thru the sports section of any major newspaper should net you a
number or two. Hmmm ... 976-DUCK. Cute, you think. 011-67-89-90-24. Why so many
numbers, you ask silently? And then, that's usually when you see the four words
you dread the most. ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS.[8] Your heart sinks because you have
no credit to speak of. In fact, you only have credit to laugh at.

At this point, you are ready to scream! It is a proven fact that once a man gets
the idea of sex in his mind, there is nothing on the green earth that will
relieve it unless he gets it![9] Or some variation of it anyway. Your mind
races, the tingle has died down to an itch, which you hope is merely that, since
the cream you had to purchase was supposed to work within seven to ten days. You
pace your room and that's when your eyes lock on to your potential savior for
the evening. YOUR COMPUTER!!!

Option #4: The Internet! Ah the sweet internet, where everything is free and
there is sex for the taking! You've heard the talk, video capture, free pics,
full motion videos ... all with a few keystrokes, or key strokes as the case may
wind up. Oh happy day, what better use can you think of for your $3,000 dollar
computer!

Now, you want to do this right of course. You want to seduce yourself as you
would seduce any partner. Pamper yourself. Treat yourself right. You fire up the
computer and listen as it hums to life[10], caressing the keyboard as the hard
drive clicks and whizzes along. It's like a song to you as you prepare for your
big night.

The first rule in any seduction is ambience, ambience, ambience. You must set
the right environment for yourself and your computer. First, get yourself a
drink. A nice chardonnay would go well on a date don't you think?[11] But in a
pinch, warm soda will do. So you run into the kitchen and grab a warm can from
under the sink, since your fridge is on the fritz and as such, is passable as
extra closet space. While there, you think about some sensual foods which you
will nibble on as the ladies of the internet unfold before you. Strawberries and
chocolate sauce you dream, but in a pinch, a can of tuna fish will do. Into the
cupboard for a tin, dolphin safe of course, and some mayo ... wait, no mayo. Oh
well, tuna will do. Just as well since you have no clean dishes to eat from
anyway. Quick, grab a fork from the sink, lick it clean and off to the computer!
Wait ... one more item ... tissue paper.

You dance into the room, set your treats[12] down and saunter to the stereo to
choose some musical accompaniment. Soft music fills the air as you glide to the
light switch to dim the lights to a nice level ... wait, no dimmer ... so you
just turn them off altogether.

By this time, the computer is booted and ready to go. You glide the mouse along
the pad and select your internet icon ... a tender double click and off we go.
While your computer connects, you set to work on your treats. You pop the tab on
your soda, listening to the satisfied hiss it emits.[13] You set it down next to
your keyboard as you watch the screen flicker its messages to you, like love
notes from the electronic ether ... DIALING ... CONNECTING ... ESTABLISHING
COMMUNICATION ... You sigh contentedly and set to work on your tin, can opener
gripping the can tightly ... teeth nibbling on the metal lid ... slow turns of
the handle ... gently digging into the lid ... only to drop the can on your foot
as you have purchased a cheap opener. Undaunted, you manage to crank open a
chunk of the can ... enough to bend back for your fork to fit in.

Meanwhile, a beautiful sight greets your eyes. Your browser has opened up
telling you, I am yours to do with as you will oh great and powerful user![14]
You let loose a smug grin and slide out of your robe, letting it fall to the
floor. With deft fingers you begin your descent into a world of boundless sex
and smut. But where to go first ... so much to be had! Perhaps some help first
as you go to your favorite search engine. You type in the URL.... Uncensored
Raunch Locator you think to yourself, chuckling at your own genius ... and wait
as the browser loads up the page. Click, whirr, click ... you wait patiently and
begin on your treats. Tugging with your fork at a piece of tuna, chewing it
slowly to savor it's taste and washing it down with your warm soda. The page
sits blankly as your computer continues to load. Meanwhile, in preparation for
your escapades, you take off your tattered shirt and sit back with your drink,
making a toast to the screen. Oh yeah, you feel sexy. Too damned sexy.

The page flickers to life and you get to work. What to look for ... you type
"sex" plain and simple, and hit "return". Click whirr whiz as your hard drive
light flickers about. You lean back again and take in the music as it floats
around you. A nibble from your tuna and a little more soda. Yummy, you think, as
you catch yourself in the mirror... and the food is not bad either. Again, you
chuckle. So damned sexy, it hurts.

The search page seems to be taking a while. So much sex! This is gonna be great!
Meanwhile, you slide out of your boxers and sit there in your foot-skirts,
waiting like an expectant lover.[15] Another sip and you realize that you are
out of soda. The screen is still blank so you steal away to fetch another can.
Only birch beer[16] left, all be damned if you'll let that stop you! Pop, hiss
and back to the computer. When you return, the search page has yielded a most
surprising result: 877,215 entries matching your request! Too much to search! So
you scan briefly: www.wetnhot.com, www. snatchpatch.com, www.hornygal.com ...
where to go, where to go! That's when you spot one to your liking ...
www.freesex.com! Not only is there sex, but it is FREE!!! Free as your
nakedness, free as free can be!!![17]

Done and done. You move to the browser window and type in the letters that will
take you to the edge of pleasure. You hold your breath momentarily and hit
return ... leaning back once more for more tuna and birch beer. Oh yeah, baby
... this is it. That familiar tingle has returned ... but this time, it's
because you have to piss something fierce. The screen has not moved yet, so you
traipse off to the bathroom and relieve yourself.[18] You check your teeth in
the bathroom mirror for any unsightly morsels caught there. You are gorgeous,
and the women on that site are waiting for you!

Back to your computer where the page has begun to load. You can see the headline
blinking like some garish neon sign. FREE SEX it screams. The web's hottest
women waiting for you! You scan for the progress bar, just slightly less than an
eighth done. This page is large. Oh yeah, this is gonna be great. Just a little
while longer. While you wait, you help yourself to some more of the tuna,
peeling back more can as you feed. Your face and hands are getting a little oily
... hmm, you think, and quickly dismiss the notion.[19] You grab some tissue
paper to do some clean up.

The page continues to load ... if you squint, you can barely make out the shape
of a woman engaged in some perverse act with a lollipop ... at least that's what
you hope the shape is. Scan the progress bar again ... almost halfway ... oh
yeah.

Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" happens to come on the radio. You smile
delightedly as you start to bob with the music. You've got your tuna, your soda,
and the hottest women of the internet waiting for you. So damned sexy it's
killing you! You sing along, "When I get this feeling ... I need ... SEXual
healing ... sexual ..." Meanwhile you reach for your soda to take another macho
swig. Except in the darkness, you knock it over, spilling it all your desk and
very nearly all over your keyboard.

Quickly, you grab the tissue paper and mop up the mess. You're going thru that
roll awfully fast! Your eye darts to the screen to check on the progress ...
more shapes. Almost done! Discard the garbage, go and grab another can for the
show is about to begin. AS you settle back into your chair, the page is fully
loaded! Women all over the place, censored of course ... but that will soon
change. You scan the page for the free pics, past the hundred or so banners
linking you to other great sex sites. So much flesh! Oooh that tingling again!
Bad tuna? you ask silently. No, this time, it's for real.

No more tuna to nibble on, but that's OK ... there's birch beer to be had![20]
And women to take! So many buttons to choose from, you head for the first one.
FREE it claims. Until you hit it ... only to encounter what some would call a
scam, but you call a necessary precaution. For just $4.95, you can gain access
by purchasing an Adult Check ID# ... to prove you are of age of course. See
Options 2 & 3 and hit the BACK button.

You scan some more ... HOT SEX HERE ... THE HOTTEST TEENS ... BARELY LEGAL ...
PET PLEASURE ... so many links. Then something catches your eye. FREE SAMPLE
PICS. Can it be ... uncensored pics of naked, spread-eagled women just for you?
You dare. And hit the button ... a blank page comes up and almost immediately a
shape begins to form ... words appear ... "Mmmm, give it to me big boy!"
underneath a frame which undoubtedly contains one of the hottest women of the
internet! You lean back and wait as your hard drive races to keep up with your
lust. This ... this is the culmination of your night's work! Four cans of soda,
one can of tuna, one roll of toilet paper and no money spent!!! Your eyes widen
as the image begins to gel ... layer after layer coming together ... you are
tingling now. You lean closer ... pawing at the screen as the first flesh tones
become visible ... Is that a leg? ... Are those her arms? ... Yummy! You reach
for your drink and toast once more to the free pleasure the internet provides.

So close now ... you can see that your electric lady is dressed in a thin bodice
... wide open for you as the image clears some more ... your breath is shallow
and .... WHAT? BEA ARTHUR???!!![21]

---------------------------------------- 
[1] All I'm gonna say about this entire article is that Jeof is showing quite 
a bit of expertise here. That's all I'm gonna say. That, and please see my notes 
throughout- Editor

MR VITA'S REPLY: This was completely expected as Jeff ran out of truly original
material about 12 years ago. Every now and then, his mental gears may catch and
he' ll spurt out something somewhat new (read "Oldie but a goodie cracks"), but
as for the majority of his work nowadays ... pap.

THE FABULOUS EDITOR'S COMMENTS

I like to comment on the particularly obnoxious or interesting articles that
cross my desk, and Jeof's always qualify as one or another. His responses to my
comments are in italics. Obviously, he needs more help than we thought. - Ed

[2] Actually, I'm a member of the "Schtup Bea Arthur" Fan Club, and I get about
seventy fake nude pics of Bea Arthur every week as part of the mailing list - ED

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Bea Arthur is just the tip of the iceberg for Jeff's
collection. If you continue digging you will find Janet Reno, Ann B. Davis,
Shirley Temple, and Henry Winkler among others. 

[3] I have recently come to the disturbing conclusion that Jeof, the victim of
childhood trauma, staunchly believes there are no women, really. I think he
believes his girlfriend Misty is some sort of hallucination.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: If Misty is a hallucination, then I congratulate myself on
a pretty sweet imagination!

[4] Girlfriend: hallucination. Friends: no accident no one called him. Family:
Did I happen to mention that childhood trauma? Cat: eaten.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: The cat was accidentally eaten, after I accidentally
dropped her in my wok and accidentally doused her in soy sauce and peppercorn
curry.

[5] My mind turns to the question of who invented pudding.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: "I don't know ... your mom?"

[6] For the best in extreme closeups, might I suggest Acta Gynecologia
Scandinavia.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: See #5

[7] $2.37 translates to 12 packets of Ramen Noodles with change left over.

MR. VITA'S REPONSE: Agreed and if you don't feel sexy after having 12 packets of
Ramen noodles, then you truly are lost.

[8] These words actually fill me with a warm feeling that makes me want to hug
people, sing show tunes, and urinate.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: That warm feeling is actually your bladder emptying without
your consent again, Jeff.

[9] Actually, I'm pretty easily distracted from sexual thoughts by any one or
combination of the following things: baseball, cheeseburgers, whiskey, mooning,
amateur rectal examinations, the untiring voices in my head, Must See TV,
pastries, the smell of napalm in the morning, short swarthy men wearing
sombreros, a new song by Too Much Joy, and large books with small print and no
pictures.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Three simple words, "You are gay!" EDITORS NOTE: See my
article on page above.

[10] Remember that Jeof owns a Macintosh computer, which means that first he has
to wind it up.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Ah the Macintosh crack. To all you IBM punks out there ...
just take comfort in the fact that without Macs, Bill Gates would have nothing
to steal from. Besides, Jeff can't speak since even my wind-up PowerMac is
easily 2 million times faster than the glorified word processor he has sitting
on his desk. What Jeff, have you broken 33Mhz yet?

[11] I have always preferred two dollars worth of wine. I have no specific
brand. When there's someone to be impressed, I walk into the liquor store, slap
two bucks on the counter, and ask which bottle I can get for it.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Jeff prefers two dollars worth of anything: wine, whores,
sneakers ...

[12] Consider, please, the sort of squalid life where you would refer to warm
Shop Rite soda and plain tuna fish from a can as.....treats.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: As opposed to 12 packets of Ramen? Washed down with warm,
brown tap water? 

[13] I also emit a satisfied hiss from time to time.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Most people call that farting.

[14] Jeof literally has his computer programmed to say this when he turns it on.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Jeff's computer utters, "Please kill me."

[15] Now that I have this image of Jeof in his "foot-skirts" to read forever,
who needs internet smut?

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Exactly.

[16] Be warned that Birch-Beer is neither made from Birch bark nor, strictly
speaking, is it beer.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Yes, but warm soda of any kind can often produce a buzz on
par with that of any thick German bier. 

[17] Like a young boy running naked through the fields on a cool spring day....

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: See #9

[18] What kind of sissy uses a word like "traipse", anyway?

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: See #5

[19] One speculates as to the nature of this mysterious "notion"; perhaps a
notion to not insert your face directly into the can of tuna and slobber at it
like a wildebeast?

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: For me to know and you to find out. 

[20] How many of my recent nights have ended with me moaning out these very
words...

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: One too many Jeff, one too many. 

[21] No Bea Arthurs were hurt during the writing of this article, although
several were threatened anonymously over the phone. You'd be amazed how many
people are named "Bea Arthur" in this world.

MR. VITA'S RESPONSE: Actually, Jeff probably as Bea Arthur tied up in his
basement, sucking at orange rinds and drinking pipe runoff. But that is a tale
for another day.

EDITOR'S FINAL COMMENTS, WHICH HE CAN DO BECAUSE ITS HIS GODDAMNED ZINE: Mr.
Vita obviously has a lot of anger. While we're all pulling for him I hope that
it's obvious to you all that he has some major problems. If you meet him in
person, please humor him and tell him you enjoyed his comments.Then run.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***  
In Defense of Singleness 
I am sick to death of chicks
by Jeff Somers
========================================

OKAY, NEWSFLASH: I am a single male, 26, financially incompetent, charming,
well-read, lazy, non-leader who bonds easily with women but hasn't had a date in
years. That part many of you know. My blatant singleness is not only obvious, I
usually can't stop talking about it, either in my faux-whining articles
concerning bachelors and their lonely stand against the communist forces of love
or in my whining conversations with the many females I became friends with after
they refused to date me (the one thing in this world that makes me think that
maybe, just maybe women are smarter than men  -I would have dated me in a
second). What no one seems to take note of, or believe, is that I like it this
way. My pseudo-scientific analyses of this problem are ignored (or
misunderstood), and my humorous takes on the subject don't seem to penetrate
either. So I'm taking a new tact: brutal honesty. After all, it's the SEX issue,
right?

First of all, let me say that the shock and disbelief I am greeted with when I
happily admit I haven't dated in what amounts to a whore's age really, really
makes no sense to me. I'm sure that when you meet that perfect someone who is
your obvious soul mate, whose company you instantly enjoy, who pushes so many of
your buttons you're lighting up like a pinball machine within five minutes of
meeting them  -I'm sure when that happens, dating is a joy. Otherwise, I wonder
what the big deal is. Inner Swine Rule of Love #1: Dating is sheer hell.

Bad attitude, I know, but too true. Everyone has such a belligerent attitude
towards dating: women are constantly judging every gesture you make against
their concept of what's attractive, and you can't win. You're either overly
reserved or impolite, penniless or overly impressed with your bank account,
scruffy or a pretty-boy  -unless you match what she's looking for, my friends,
you are screwed. Also, you're competing against every guy that has ever messed
with her head in her entire life, and you can't win there, either. Trust me.
When it comes to overcoming hard-wired mental damage from previous relationships
you're better off just slipping her a check for six months of therapy and
telling her to call you when it's done.  Add to that the fact that her friends
will be organizing a smear campaign against you even before they learn your
name, and its a wonder that anyone ever gets laid in this sad world.

I mean, the purpose of dating, after all, is to weed out the idiots and genetic
defectives, so why is it surprising that its a grueling and dignity-consuming
endeavor? From the get-go she's looking for reasons to hate you, because liking
you just invites madness into her own house. Every step of the date is a trap. 
Why? Because our society allows this dynamic: women are the pursued. The age-old
cliche is that men need to be confident, successful, suave, cultured, in charge,
experienced and secure in order to be attractive, while women need only look
good in a wonderbra. Women pretty much know that men will have sex with anyone
or anything that is willing, no matter what their actual opinion of that person
or thing. We might think you're boring and slow-witted, we might be willing to
chew our own legs off to escape that after-dinner conversation entitled Melrose
Place and the Socioeconomic Relationship between Andrew Shue and Hair
Scrunchies, we might steer you away from our usual hangouts so as not to be seen
with you in public...but we'll have sex with you if you'll let us insinuate a
tentacle between you and your panties. Women know this, natch. Women on the
other hand require, or so I'm told, much more before they'll grant all-access
passes to we simpering apes. They know they can set those standards high, watch
in amusement our doomed attempts to hurdle them, and then never see us again and
tell their satisfied friends how disappointing we were on the Male Desirability
Scale, using one of the following Universal Female Putdowns:

PUTDOWN               TRANSLATION
------------------------------------------------------------- 
too immature          too poor 
too full of himself   too poor/didn't find me fascinating enough to tolerate 
                      "Melrose Place" discussion 
too weird             too poor/had opinions that differ from Dad's 
too creepy            too poor/I wasn't drunk enough to have sex with him

Dating is a slow grinding march into insanity, it's basically the way nature
wears men down until we burst into tears and agree to just take whatever shit
the woman sitting across from us is serving up forever as long as they agree to
marry us and keep us out of the dating rat race for the rest of our lives. It's
nature's way of perpetuating the race, if you think about it.

So, dating sucks, and when earnest chicks ask me why I don't seem to be
interested in dating all this stuff flashes through my head, although I usually
just smile a little and say something vague about not meeting anyone or being
comfortable alone. Sometimes I like to fake a seizure when this conversation
comes up since the prospect of explaining my weird bachelor ways is about as
appetizing as eating leeches whole. Sometimes, when I've had a few drinks and
I'm feeling like sharing, I'll talk about how nine and a half out of ten people
give me hives.

Hives: my Websters New World Dictionary (which I've had since I was a wee lad,
making it not quite so new anymore) defines hives as  an allergic skin condition
characterized by itching and smooth, raised patches. That's right: people give
me smooth raised patches on my skin that itch. I mean, I suppose the sheer hell
of dating might be tolerable if the person were so amazing that you'd gladly
sacrifice your dignity and self-image and money for the rare privilege of
getting to know them, but the more people I meet the more I am convinced that I
have already met all the people who fall into that category for me and none of
them have been willing to date me yet (and in the case of Jeof Vita and Ken
West, thank goodness). My typical reaction to an introduction to a new person is
to immediately think of five reasons I have to get up early the next morning.

Why do I have this sickenly cynical attitude? Because all the people I meet
these days fall into the following general groups:

1. The Easily Offended: there was once a time in this world, I am told, where we
treasured differing opinions. No more! Our grand culture of trash TV and
victimhood has left us all without a sense of humor and with absolutely no
perspective. The problem with the Easily Offended is that they have been raised
with this idea that their opinion should be important to me, and the moment I
say something they don't agree with or find objectionable in some way, they say
so. This implies that they believe I a) give a shit and b) consider the opinion
of a complete stranger worthy of my consideration. I'm supposed to date these
people? I can barely keep from shouting at them in public.

2. The Easily Affectionate: This might sound groovy at first, but trust me when
I say that it is the complete opposite of groovy. It's downright disco, bwana. 
There are people out there who seem to be able to form strong emotional bonds
with you after about five minutes  -three minutes, if alcohol is involved. A
week after the introduction, you're being called at three in the morning and
invited to their parents house for brunch. Before you've even established if the
person has half a brain you're part of their inner circle  -an inner circle that
cannot possibly be all that exclusive, which sort of de-values the membership,
if you ask me. Call me a whiner if you will, but I kind of  don't trust people
who get friendly too fast. They're either desperate (which doesn't make me feel
too good about being included in their shadowy life) or completely not picky.
I'm supposed to date someone who doesn't even screen? My goodness, that's like
not hanging up on telemarketers: where the hell does it stop? Because if they're
not screening their acquaintances, guess who ends up saddled with all the
weirdos and undesirables they pick up along the way? That's right, the idiot who
dates them.

3. The Always Unhappy: There are plenty of people out there who are constantly
dis-satisfied with their lives. Now, a certain amount of this is a good thing.
It's what inspires us to improve our lot in life. Some people, however, have the
unfortunate tendency to always be unhappy. The service is never good enough,
their jobs are never interesting enough, their apartments suck, their cab
drivers are always idiots, everything always happens to them. The Always Unhappy
are just whiners, after all. I'm the sort of person who doesn't believe making
someone elses life harder just to make yours minutely more comfortable  -for
example, by chewing out a waitress who brings the wrong beverage-  is a good way
to live. Date the Always Unhappy? Never, babe, because when you date someone you
sort of end up championing them and their causes, to an extent, and I just think
we all need to relax a little and accept that the little things in life are just
that: little.

I could go on. And on. I have long lists of why I hate people in general, but
that could get boring  -although, if you're still reading this I'm not sure it
is possible to bore you.

Okay, to recap: dating sucks and people are generally not lighting my fire these
days. I cannot bring myself to date the unlikable simply to have sex, so I ask
you, gentle reader, where is my motivation to date? It would be nice to have sex
once in a while, of course, but I am still hoping to wear down one or two of my
Eternally Suffering Chick Friends (ESCFs) into having pity sex with me on a
regular basis, so that isn't a good enough reason yet. The only other reason for
dating is the whole family and marriage bit.

Family? Marriage? I hate kids, I thought I'd been pretty clear on this. Oh, I
was a kid once myself, of course, and I didn't think I was such a bad person.
Mom and Dad certainly thought I was the bees knees. But I'm sure if I traveled
back in time and met myself I'd be fighting the urge to kick the child-me in the
balls within a few short minutes. At least now I can walk away from children and
sigh a deep sigh of relief. If they were my kids I'd be super-screwed.

Marriage? Come on. Despite the breathtaking optimism of many of my friends and
associates when it comes to marriage I continue to believe heartily in its
artificialness and eventual sterility. Oh, it works for some people, I'll admit.
Maybe for more couples than I'm willing to admit. But it won't work for me,
which is really all I take into consideration when contemplating my decision
here. Why not? Two simple reasons: 1. I am a selfish bastard and 2. I literally
wouldn't trust anyone who wanted to marry me. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I
wouldn't want to be married to anyone who would marry me, of all people. I think
my ESCFs will back me up on this one: knowing my belief system, my personality,
my general grouchiness, why in the world would anyone wish to shackle themselves
to my shopping cart for the rest of their lives? It's either a personality
disorder or a bizarrely complex revenge plan. Either way, I see nothing in it
for me.

Finally, I think I have tired myself out to reveal one last reason why I don't
date, and this one comes from the bottom of my heart, pigs: I only attract
insane people.

Every sane and together-chick I know has sensibly stayed away from me. The last
few chicks who actually showed some interest in me and my writer's body (custom
built for couches) were, without any doubt, certifiable. Now, admittedly, these
are women who actually pursued me, so I suppose you could say that that level of
desperation will addle anyone's mind. But I think they were born nuts, and their
warped sensibilities is the only reason they sniffed the dark scent of my rage,
cynicsm and defeat and thought hey, what a groovy guy.

Now, some of my ESCFs shake their heads in frustration at this point, clearly
thinking that I project insanity onto sane people so I'll have an excuse to not
get involved. This is patently untrue. For example, the last chick who decided I
was groovy enough to pant after also enjoyed having long conversations with
herself. Well, I assume that's who she was talking to, because I certainly
wasn't listening.

What I really want is to be left alone on the subject. Maybe there is such a
thing as thunderbolt love, where I'll walk into a strip club some night in the
future and fall madly in love with some woman named Candi with an "i" on the
spot and be married in a matter of days. If so, I guess I'll find out no matter
how bad my attitude is right now. Maybe. I don't deny the presence of miracles
in the universe and I don't claim to know my future. All I know is right now I
have neither the energy, the inclination, or the prescription drugs necessary to
engage in any kind of a relationship.

The way I figure it, seventy years from now when I'm drooling all over myself in
a home (paid for by the State, no doubt) I'll either be triumphant or desolate
concerning my attitude towards love, but either way I probably won't have enough
faculties left to be aware of it, so all ends well in an Inner Swine universe:
everybody wins!

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY *** 
ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER, BEEN THE SORT OF GUY TO ENJOY A MIXED DRINK WITH 
THE WORD 'SMOOTHIE' IN THE NAME? 
The continuing shame of the beta male accused of homosexuality. 
By Jeff Somers 
========================================

"Not that there's anything wrong with that" - Seinfeld

IT'S FUNNY. In all the great sci-fi novels written long ago and set fifty to a
hundred years from now, civilization was supposed to have advanced to the point
where society was completely engineered, controlled, and productive. We were
supposed to have conquered disease, mechanized the world, and solved so many
problems that we were able to turn our malignant attention onto ourselves and
begin the busy work of racial suicide.

We're still waiting. As I am now fond of saying, as soon as they install those
wall-sized TVs that never shut off and I get my new job burning down the
libraries, none of this will matter any more and we'll all be able to assume our
worker-bee roles in the new Orwellian nightmare without fuss or struggle (please
don't struggle; it'll just make things worse for the rest of us). I'm holding
out hope that I'll be named Chief of the Ministry of Truth, but that really
depends on who engineers the final revolution, doesn't it? If it's Ken West and
his evil Financial Nazi cohorts, I'll probably have a shot. If it's anyone else,
I suppose burning down the libraries wouldn't be so bad.

The reason I bring all this up (aside from using up a few pages of this
albatross-around-my-neck I affectionately call The Inner Swine) is simple: every
now and then, people come to the erroneous conclusion that I'm a homosexual.

Now, in a perfect world, that's all I'd need to write: you would all understand
the rest implicitly. We do not live in a perfect world, however, and I often
find myself blathering on for pages about subjects Karen Accavallo finds
disasterously boring just to explain myself. It's really all your fault.

It's obvious why this happens to me sometimes; to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, I
am thin, neat, and single. Add to that the fact that I am as adamantly
pro-bachelor as you're ever likely to witness, and the result, sometimes, is
this startling accusation. The problem is, you see, we're in this modern world
which, although full of evil and ignorance and failure and disappointment is
supposedly moving forward, getting smarter, getting more tolerant, brightening
up. Part of the reason the world is supposed to be such a much better place is
people like me and the bright young kids I hang out with: we're cautiously
liberal (except for the Undauntable Cassie Moore, who voted for Dole), we're
tolerant and understanding, and we're all fervent believers in the sentiment
behind the phrase not that there's anything wrong with that. If you're
unfamiliar with the phrase, it's from the TV show Seinfeld wherein a reporter
thinks Jerry and George are a gay couple. Jerry and George are upset and make
passionate denials, always careful to affirm how there's nothing wrong with it 
-they just don't want to be it.

Hence, the problem: if there's nothing wrong with it, why does the mistaken
assumption or accusation bring such a flight or fight response? Why, when people
ask me this question, do my eyes bug out as I begin to sweat and stammer?

Cynical men like Jeof Vita might say that it's a guilty conscience. I'll ignore
that for the moment in the interests of  The Pursuit of Knowledge. You see, if I
were brought before a Jack-Booted government committee on national television
and asked this question so I could have my scarlet letter surgically attached, I
could understand being a little nervous about the prospect. But when it's some
friend or friends, people you've cared for, and who care for you, their motives
can't be so dark and hairy, can they? It's usually either mild curiosity or mild
concern or maybe just a stray thought that pops into their heads without
warning.  So why do I stare at them like a deer in the headlights when it comes
up (I should point out here that the question doesn't come up too often; I'm not
a complete swish, for god's sake)?

Well, two reasons, that I can think of. The first one is pretty straightforward:
shock. It's always a shock when something you always thought was assumed about
yourself is suddenly questioned by a close confidant (it's even more shocking
when it's questioned by a complete stranger, bwana) and sometimes even I can get
a little vapor-locked when ambushed like that, especially if I have a mouthful
of red beans and rice and some hot sauce dribbling down my chin at the time.

That's certainly part of it, but the second is a little deeper: fundamentally, I
don't think people are really accusing you of being homosexual when they accuse
you of being homosexual. I think they're basically saying that you're a wimp,
and that's why a sensitive man of the nineties like myself gets all worried and
hyperventilated when it floats up out of the dark depths of someone elses
perception. The fact is, if I were a homosexual I could just tell the principles
(my Mom might have an interesting reaction) and after the minor hubbub
associated with just about any big announcement I doubt there would be any big
thing to deal with. As a matter of fact, considering my dateless life right now,
probably nothing would change, really.

No, it's not the suspicion of lifestyle that makes poor souls like me drum out
the denials like poorly-phrased press releases, it's the insinuation of
character flaw. Because, sadly, even in these enlightened times the homosexual
is saddled with a lot of unenlightnened stereotypes. I think that if the culture
in general and the people I associate with in specific held the homosexual
orientation/lifestyle in better regard, no one would care if we were accused of
the the Love That You Dare Not Name  -even if all the rednecks would line up to
kick your ass, even if it meant you might lose that cushy military job. It's not
so much the stigma of being gay, it's the stigma of being the effeminate little
wimp that so many people think of when we hear the word homosexual.

I should pause here and say that my friends and associates, almost to a person,
are amongst the most sensitive and tolerant people on this world, damn their
tree-hugging skins. And still, on those few occasions when I have been braced
with the swish question, I've been dismayed with the implied question of what
must they think of me to come to that conclusion. Let's face it, we don't accuse
boisterous, aggressive, commanding men of being gay. We accuse fey,
color-coordinated men who know how to Tango of being gay. Faced with this
contrast, your Editor gets a little flustered, and then goes home to drink half
a Fifth of cheap bourbon by himself. Purple-faced with frustration, buttressed
by booze, and wallowing in pity, this often leads to phone calls to women who
until that moment were happily sans Jeff and remain sans Jeff after the phone
call, only now virulently sans Jeff (I usually wake up in the kitchen covered in
dried beer and ants, and promptly decide that being an Alpha Male is just way
too much effort, and resign myself to being suspected of soft-shoes for the rest
of my life).

Oh well, I guess its the price I pay for injecting some style into my single
life. Or maybe its just that I haven't dated anyone in a really, really long
time (see the article on this subject on page 40)  -it doesn't matter. I'm not
whining about it, I can take the rumor of gayness like a man and even bravely
explore its implications with the world! Because that's what secure
heterosexuals do when their orientation is questioned, or so I'm told. The point
is, it isn't the lifestyle that brings such dark implication, it's the image
associated with the lifestyle  -just like everything else in this cold, sad
world, it's all about the image.

Speaking of image: am I not a cutie, or what?

========================================
*** FICTION ***  
No Stranger to Frustration
by Jeff Somers 
========================================

IT WAS the fourth of July again, and the Indians next door were playing music at
top volume in their yard. Mister Carrol thought it sounded like a lot of cats
being killed, slowly. He stood on the roof looking out across the city, across
the river to the other city, smoking a cigarette and feeling the warm roof under
his bare feet. The air was still but not oppressive, hanging but not pushing,
clear and thin. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and contributed his own
minor pollution to the atmosphere.

He glanced down at the backyard. It was overgrown with trees and weeds and
rusting metal, completely untended and as wild as yards got in the city. It was
a small, dark jungle, surrounded by neat and careful yards, yards with gardens,
yards with tended lawns.

Mister Carrol sighed, flicking his cigarette into the night. He just hadn't had
the energy to deal with the yard recently.

He put his hands in his pockets, nodded to himself, and stepped off the roof.

The Indians next door, drunk on cheap domestic beer, heard something big and
heavy crash through the trees and hit one of the rusting old bicycles in the
neighbor's yard, but the music drowned most of the noise out, and none of them
heard the soft laughter that persisted for a few minutes after. They discussed
the crash and finally one man got up and padded, none too steadily, over to the
fence.

He returned a moment later, shaking his head, and retrieved his beer. "That man
is crazy." he said to the other men. "He is lying in his backyard, laughing to
himself."

They nodded, sagely.

"How'd you do this to yourself?"

Mister Carrol smoked quietly beneath the NO SMOKING sign in the emergency room
while the pretty surgeon's assistant sewed up one of the many gashes along his
body.

"I ah, I jumped off my roof."

The sewing paused. Mister Carrol just smoked.

"Why?"

His face twitched as the needle moved through him. "To kill myself." he said.
"But it didn't work."

Another pause. "Why not?"

"It never does."

Walking through the city, bandaged and bathed in streetlight, Mister Carrol
smoked, ignoring traffic signals and causing several accidents, which he ignored
and walked away from. A block away from his apartment, he stopped in a tavern
called McCullogh's. The only patrons were a young man and woman, dancing
drunkenly in front of the juke box. In the Wee Hours of the Morning was drifting
in the air, languid and smoky. The bartender was a slender young woman with dark
hair and a pierced nose. She glanced up as Mister Carrol entered.

"We're closing in ten minutes." she said.

He took a seat. "Vodka Gimlet."

She approached him. "Jesus, buddy, what happened to you?"

He leaned back and plucked his cigarette from his mouth. "Did that hurt?"

She was pouring vodka carelessly. "Did what  - oh, the ring? No, not really."

"Did it get infected?"

She placed the drink in front of him. "No. My friends told me it would, but it
didn't." She watched him pick up the glass and sniff its contents. "I think I'll
take it out, though; too many guys use it to hit on me."

He grinned and knocked back the drink in one gulp. He coughed and gestured at
his glass. "I assumed that was the point."

She glanced down at the glass. "Man drink and smoke like that, man is going to
die."

His smile grew. "Oh, god, I hope so." he said, shaking his head. "But I doubt
it."

She peered at him, glanced over at the dancing duo, and back again. "Like I
said," she grinned, mixing him a second drink, "I get off in ten minutes."

He raised his glass to her. "It may take a little longer," he said, "but who's
counting?"

She laughed.

After watching her sleep until the sun was completely up, he crawled out the
bedroom window onto the fire escape to smoke a cigarette. When it was done, he
stood up, flicked the butt away, and jumped off.

People were staring at him, but it didn't bother him. He just wished the
bleeding would stop. He sipped coffee and kept an eye on the other customers.
When the grandmotherly woman left her table and approached him, he eyed her
bitterly.

"Go away." he growled.

She seemed to take his attitude well enough, her face set in a mask of concern.
"You should go to a hospital, son." she said tenderly. "You're quite hurt, and
may be in shock."

He turned away and sneered into his cup. "Not as hurt as you'd think, mother,"
he said, "and not shocked at all, really. Actually, I'm quite used to it. So go
away."

She was getting a little annoyed. "I'm only trying to help."

He nodded. "And I'm only trying to die."

She stared at him. He examined his coffee cup, savoring the hot coffee, with
milk and sugar and everything bad for most people  -he could feel the heat as it
moved down his throat, into his belly, settling in and fading slowly. It almost
made him able to ignore the aches and pains.

She sniffed. "It's quite unpleasant to have to see a man, looking beat up, bleed
all over the counter."

He grit his teeth, but as he opened his mouth to reply, there was a sudden
presence next to him, dark and tall, as someone took the seat next to him.

"Take a hike, Mom." a low, scratchy voice growled.

"Excuse me?" the woman asked archly.

"Mister Carrol turned to face his new neighbor. It was a tall, barrel-chested
man, with pale, pale skin and dark, shiny hair, dressed entirely in a tight,
uncomfortable-looking black suit. Carrol felt tiny next to his bulk.

The large man was gripping a plastic menu in both hands, fiercely. He swivelled
his head to face the woman, scowling.

"I said take a fucking hike."

The woman glared for a moment more, and then turned away in a huff. Mister
Carrol turned back to stare at his new companion. After a few seconds, he
reached into his back pocket for a cigarette, and lit one.

"All right," Mister Carrol said, seemingly bemused, "who the hell are you?"

The large man dropped the menu and spun to face Mister Carrol. He let his black
eyes move up and down for a moment.

"So," he said to Mister Carrol, "you're a Lifer, huh?"

Carrol blinked. "I'm sorry?" he exhaled.

"Don't be." the burly man said. "It's not your fault, after all."

"What isn't?"

"Being a Lifer."

Mister Carrol shook his head, sipping coffee. "I don't know what the hell you're
talking about."

"You've really been knocking yourself out, huh?"

Carrol looked back at him. "Listen, buddy, I'm not in -"

The man in black raised an eyebrow. "I can do it for you, you know."

Carrol caught his breath in frustration. "What's that then?"

The broad, pale face split into a grin. "I can kill you."

The first time had been an accident. He'd been six, and he'd been hit by a car,
hard enough to throw him through the air like a rag doll, high enough for him to
bounce when he hit ground. Everyone had been convinced that he'd died. They'd
even run and told his parents that he'd been killed.

When his mother had arrived, screaming and bereft, he'd already gotten up and
walked away, shaken but unhurt. Oddly enough, when he'd come home hours later
his parents had celebrated his continuing existence by grounding him for two
weeks.

Carrol squinted at the man in black, forgetting his cigarette and letting it
dangle from his lower lip. Then he shook his head, returning his attention to
his coffee.  "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, buddy."

"Sure I do."  the large man replied cheerfully.  "I'm one too. I spent thirteen
years jumping off rooftops and bleeding into tubs  -endless bleeding, man. " He
winked.  "I know what I'm talking about, natch."

Mister Carrol considered this. Nearby, two waitresses hid behind a menu and held
a giggling conversation about them, just loud enough to be conspicuous. The
large, dark men glared at them until they looked his way, and then held their
return stares until they moved away, obviously disconcerted.

"I thought I was the only one."  Carrol finally said.

The man in black chuckled.  "More of us than you'd imagine. A lot of us don't
even know it  -only those of us who try to check ourselves out, and find out the
hard way. Like you and me."

Carrol stared in a dazed, unfocussed way.  "I've tried everything." he said,
trailing off and glancing down at his coffee.

"Oh, I doubt it." The large man grinned.  "I can think of at least one trick."

"How'd you find out?"

"Luck, naturally."  the big man replied.  "I'd just about given up and resigned
myself to living for years and years. Then one of my fellow Lifers turned up
dead  -murdered, it seemed.

"We were perplexed  -but not alarmed. After all, he'd wanted to die, right? But
of course his family and the cops didn't understand, and they caught his killer,
and got him convicted."

The big man tried to attract the attention of a waitress, and failed, returning
his attention to Carrol.  "A few days before his