======================================== *** THE INNER SWINE *** Volume 5, Issue 4, December 1999 www.innerswine.com ======================================== "I want to change the world, but I can't even change myself" - Too Much Joy CONCEPT BY: Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita COVER ART BY: Jeof Vita EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers PUBLISHER In Absentia: Cassie Moore WEBMASTERS: Jeof Vita, Ken West, my own bad self ADVICE & FREE DRINKS: Send Resume c/o The Inner Swine KORREKTOR EXTRAORDINAIRE: Karen Accavallo OVERALL OFFICIAL COOL CHICK: Lauren Strutzel OFFICIAL INTERNET NEWSGROUP: alt.asha.and.jeff.fuckn.rock, where only asha anderson and I are allowed to post messages. FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: Misty S. Quinn, Esq, who remains my favorite person to have a few beers with in this mostly sad and lonely world; Lauren L.J. Strutzel, who I miss terribly since she hitched her train to Colorado’s cold soil, but who remains in my heart; Jeof Vita, for still creating the sort of amazing graphic design work for free and sparing the world my horrific attempts at DIY covers; Ken West, for offering me Yankees playoff tickets and for standing in line with me at Shea Stadium for 7 hours in October; R.A., who continues to spawn at a disturbing rate but who remains one of my favorite people; The Duchess, for being amazing, and who, if nothing else, gave me the phrase "tickle pink wine", and for also standing in line with me at Shea Stadium for 7 hours in October; Gena Sabin, who amuses me to no end and tolerates my astronomical Dork Factor; Karen Accavallo, who continues to try and be friendly despite the fact that her efforts always end in tragedy; Cassie Moore, who still associates with us despite our rapidly plunging social stock; Elizabeth Augoustiniatos; one of my oldest friends I don’t see often enough, who foolishly tolerates me despite my obvious shortcomings; Rob Gala, our man on the west coast, who hasn’t held anything against us in a really long time. ======================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================================== EDITORIAL: "Carl Sagan Taught Me to Manipulate Time" SPECIOUS OPINION: "The Yuppie Scum Factor: Time is Our New Status Symbol" COMMENTARY: "Swinebucks: The Money of the Future" COMMENTARY: "‘Fuck You’ Can Be Poetry Too, You Know: Livin’ La Vida Loca on Alt.Zines" COMMENTARY: "This Life’s Not the Best Life (But At Least I’m Not You): A Day at Jeff Somers’ Job" COMMENTARY: "Why Talk Radio Makes Me Puke" INTERVIEW: "Ten Questions With Tim, The Angry Clown" VIRTUALLY ARTLESS COMIC: "Mr. Mute! #3" NO CATEGORY COMES TO MIND: "We Locked Levon Sobieski In The Hole for Three Months and All We Got Was This Lame Article" COMMENTARY: "Diff’rent Strokes: Everyone Needs a Mental Handjob to Feel Good About Themselves" BULLSHIT!: "Smells Like Pork Spirit: The Inner Swine Cast of Characters" FICTION: "Can Open Worms Everywhere" ---------------------------------------- The Inner Swine Volume 5 Issue 4. Magazine published March, June, September, and December by Oinking Sow, Inc. © 1999 by Jeff Somers. (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, PO Box 3024, hoboken, NJ 07030; mreditor@innerswine.com. 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. Misty Quinn (above left) sez: "I sure do think that Jeff Somers is mighty durn cute, especially after a few cups of Tickle Pink wine make me all tingly." ======================================== WHAT THE FUCK'S BEEN GOIN' ON? ======================================== TIME HAS COME TODAY...You know, back in 1993 when the decision was made to have a loose theme for every issue, it seemed like a harmless conceit, and so it has remained. Whether the theme is Death, Love, or Dishonesty, I have always managed to barely acknowledge the theme and pretty much write whatever was on my mind at the moment, usually booze, chicks, and the Throbbing Paranoid Anger That Directs My Every Action. There’s nothing different in this issue. The theme is supposed to be Time, but I’d estimate 67% of the issue has nothing at all to do with that loose concept. What is weird is that ever since I decided to make Time the theme, I’ve been plagued by Time Issues. As in, I haven’t had much of it to spare, partly because of the Baseball post-season, which has kept me in bars watching games, in stadiums watching games, and at home watching games more than usual - which I would have thought impossible. Add in a combined 15 hours or so spent first waiting in line at Shea Stadium and then witnessing a 15-inning classic in Game 5 of the NLCS, and I’ve been a busy baseball fan. Also, The Inner Swine is slowly becoming something of a legitimate enterprise. Desert Moon Periodicals has contacted me about distributing TIS, which will mean some national exposure and a shiny new bar code on the front cover if we decide to work with them. Research so far is sketchy, and no deal is struck, but we’ll see...but hopefully beginning with the next issue, we’ll be popping up in actual retail stores across the country. Whether this is the beginning of the Swine Revolution, or just the first installment of my Sell Out, time will tell. If nothing else, it’s been keeping me busy. Related to our overall legitimacy, Harpers Magazine called to request a copy of TIS back in September, for their own sinister purposes. I’ve heard bad things about Harpers in connection with zines, but hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, is there? Men in Black: I am amazed at the sheer number of black leather coats owned by Americans. Maybe it’s because I work in Manhattan, which has a Hipster Doofus-to-Normal ratio of about 600 to 1, but I see about a hundred such jackets every day. Three times that many if I’m in Manhattan at night at various bars, where the Men in Black crowd in, smoking cigarettes and talking on their cell phones. It contributes to my growing feeling that I am very different from everyone else in the world Finally, back in September I went on vacation with a large portion of TISIC and frolicked on the beach, got badly sunburnt, and spent the rest of the month slathered in Noxema and groaning. It was a fun week, however, and we were all only mildly irritated with each other by the end of it, which marks the first time TISIC has spent more than 48 hours together without violence of some sort breaking out. Maybe it was the freely flowing liquor, maybe it was the Vitamin D poisoning, or maybe the fear of having to pay for damages to the rental house - in any event a good time was had by all. Why do you need to know this? You don’t - but that’s the wonder of this zine, ain’t it? And now, The Inner Swine, already in progress... ======================================== 1999: The Year of ME Heres what they're saying about ME: ======================================== Ninjalicious of Infiltration ($2 cash/postage PO Box 66069, Town Centre PO, Pickering, ON L1V 6P7, Canada; http://www.infiltration.org) sent me Infiltration #14 along with a note: "...issue [5(2)] was a thing of beauty which brought tears to mine eyes...your nightmarish vision of the future tickled my fancy...The Pepsi One thing was extremely funny...perceptive, too. Your conclusion that ‘the purpose of government becomes its own perpetuation’ (a reasonably faithful paraphrase) was a step in the right direction, I’d venture a little further and say at some point of largeness, the purpose of almost any organization becomes its own perpetuation and expansion...The mats thing was very nice...the byline ("by Karen Accavallo, authority") was also delightful...I look forward to your next one. TIS is one of my favorites." While we thank Jeff for the kind words and the obvious care he took in reading our little rag, we were disturbed by the inordinate number of Dungeons & Drgaons references in this note (edited out here for the safety of our younger readers with impressionable minds) both because he included them, and because we actually understood them. Infiltration #14 continues the good work of "going places you’re not suppose to go" with trips to a Roswell Missile Silo, Saskatchewan Sanitarium, and, most interestingly to me, to the school where Degrassi High was filmed, now unused. Jeff also ponders the what percentage the adrenaline rush of breaking small laws and evading security has to do with his drive to explore, noting that while he doesn’t think he’s a thrill-seeker the times when he was invited to explore with full permission were not as enjoyable or satisfying as his midnight runs into the guts of verboten Ontario. An interesting subject, explored over and over again with good writing and a nice sense of humor. As always, we encourage everyone to check it out. Clint Johns of Tower Records, who has been paying me for issues these past few months, E-mailed me a nice note about TIS 5(3): "Well, it looks like the September issues will always be strong for you- of course I’m not in possession of the September issues from volumes one, two, and three, but both four and five have been excellent. Purkeypile would probably say delicious, but I deplore the use of that word in this context, so I’ll stick with excellent...this issue- it came in the mail, and I spent most of the evening reading the whole damned thing, laughing all the way. Except I skipped the story at the end, for the same reasons that you would skip the story at the end of my zine, were I to create a zine that had a story at the end. I did, however, read the poetry. "Mechanical Brain" was inoffensive, but "Tundra" I thought must have been placed specifically to haunt me...Long way of saying that I think this one was your best yet, at least in the series I’ve seen." Whoa. It’s always gratifying to hear from people who really have nothing to gain by blowing smoke up your ass. Have you paid Tower Records for the privilege of owning a new issue of The Inner Swine? No? Get off your ass! DB Pedlar of Skunk’s Life (25727 Cherry Hill Road, Cambridge Springs, PA 16403) snet us the new issue of SL and some other goodies: "I would consider putting a disclaimer somewhere in The Inner Swine: Do not eat bean burritos while reading. Wow, laughing and beans together develops a lot of gas." When this wound its way through our complicated personality filters, it turned out to be the greatest compliment we’ve ever received. Skunk’s Life is a great little collection of writing; I love the loose, happy feel of this zine. All Swine should send DB some money for a sample and see for themselves. Then again, none of you ever do what I tell you to, so this is all probably pointless. Vincent Voelz of Breakfast (3621 153rd Lane NW, Andover, MN 55304-3020; http://www.winternet.com/~voelzv/breakfast; breakfast @winternet.com; $2.50 for sample issue) sent us an email which briefly startled us out of our usual smug stupor: "Hey asshole, I just got the latest TIS in the mail a couple weeks ago. What a piece of crap. Ok, actually, I loved it. I finally feel like I’m vibing with the whole TIS groove. A case in point: yes, I too was sitting on the toilet at the very moment I was reading in your letters section about how other reviewers were reading it on the toilet. "The issue remains in my bookbag, from where I can whip it out at a moment’s notice to give myself a shot of self-appreciating Somers-style story-spinning to keep me awake between classes at the University of Minnesota." I have a theory that states that if I can get every reader of TIS to flush their toilets at the same exact moment in time, a portal to heaven will open and God will come and take all Swine to the promised land, which, as I understand it, is in Rhode Island somewhere. Either that or we’ll all drown in our bathrooms, and get on the news as some sort of "Heaven’s Gate" deal, which would also be cool. Vincent’s zine is very cool and if you haven’t checked it out...well, there isn’t much I can do about that, but check the ad elsewhere in this issue and consider it. Dammit. Dan Sills of no particular claim to fame also sent us an E-Mail: "Dear editor, Last night I found two women on my bed reading TIS. They were squirming in what appeared to be either pleasure but what could have been the series of death-throes that usually follows ingestion of poisonous legumes. The two women quickly left after I surprised them. -Your most western reader, Dan Sills." Dan has been terrorizing me for years, despite assassination attempts and legal remedy. I suspect he’s in league with Rob Gala. Someone help me. Emersøn Damerøn checked in with his own E-Mail: "Jeff, My friends all say the Swine is no good for me, that it just loves me for my money. Sure enough, the new issue trumpets the amount of my contribution and then dismisses me with the insulting suggestion that my glacier-melting heart is for sale. And what’s up with all those OTHER names? I knew loving the Swine would hurt, but after four Foster’s Oil Cans I’m still aching inside. Is this all there is? "Thanks for another wretched* cool issue. (I’m indoctrinating some new slang into our stagnant lexicon, so have patience. I mean, people have started using "awesome" again; something’s gotta give, and I think it’s time to bring "wretched" into the light. It’ll take time.) "The Morons Come to Jersey" was my favorite, but I also enjoyed your blunt argument against littering. It would be nice to see more raw fucking anger from the Swine--I read it for the pithy, embellished prose just like everyone else, but "the mental spark plugs to breathe" almost asphyxiated me with laughter. I like to laugh." We do love Emersøn’s money, I gotta be honest. I’d be glad to love him for some other suitably insincere and surface reason, but until he offers me one, money will have to do. Our friends at A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press (formerly Zine World)(PMB 2386, 537 Jones St., San Francisco CA 94102; http://www.UndergroundPress.org) reviewed us again in the November issue: "The Inner Swine v5#2: In this issue, the topic of "revolution" is tackled. In typical Jeff Somers fashion, he thinks it’s futile; however, the fact that he and his cohorts can go on for sixty pages about the futility of hoping for "revolution," and not bore the reader is the real genius of this zine and the people who make it year after year." (Reviewed by Paul) and "The Inner Swine v5#3: I’ve read a lot of personal zines, but this is a whole different kind of ‘personal’ * the mantra here, repeated many times in many ways, is that Jeff Somers deserves more hosannas than life has given him, so gosh darn it he’ll write his own hosannas. It’s quite amusing, and somehow it doesn’t even feel self-indulgent...There’s some non-Jeff-specific material, too, but mostly this is a big celebration of the Joy of Jeffhood, and you’ll want to bring a kazoo and join the party." (Reviewed by Andrea) Andrea, whoever she is, should be glad to discover that her line about Jeffhood and kazoos is going to be in all our advertising from now on, since, by creepy coincidence, it is the same line the voices in my head chant over and over again. We heard from Cullen Carter of My Moon or More fame (POB 773, Appleton, WI 54912-0773, $1 for sample issue), who happily mailed us MMOM #4 and a review of us which he says he will post on an upcoming zine review web site: "The Inner Swine volume 5, issue 3- Great writing is very hard find in zineland, and you definitely can’t make a case against the fact that The Inner Swine is full of great writing. First, let me quickly dispense the negatives. I dislike seeing the words "The Inner Swine" and "Jeff" a quadrillion million times on each page. Also, long, stupid "plays" about nothing just don’t keep my attention. The same goes for articles like "Why I Think Jeff Somers Is Real Smart". Sure, Jeff’s long winded, ego-inflated articles could fuel a hot-air balloon convention, but you have to look past all of that. Jeff is a funny and, sometimes, thoughtful writer. As I read this zine at lunch hour, I got an instant glued-on grin and found myself occasionally laughing outloud, spitting out small pieces of Oscar Meyer bologna (or phlegm, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes). Needless to say, my old lady coworkers were staring at me unapprovingly. The article "You Write Like Your Ass Chews Gum", about downfalls of trying to become "professional writer", was very insightful. His fiction is decent, and, gasp, his poetry is swell as well. Did I mention that The Inner Swine is funny? This zine could certainly grow to be one of my favorites." We appreciate the honest criticism, especially since, goddammit, he’s right: I am a breathtakingly arrogant prick. My Moon or More #4 is a hand-held 4¼ X 5½" publication filled with the thoughtful and engaging prose of Mr. Carter. It’s a small, quick read, but damned interesting, and we all know how hard I try to not like anything I didn’t write myself. We’re pretty sure if we keep bombarding Cullen with our charm he’ll come around. Well, that’s it for the mail bag this issue. Tune in next time, when you’ll see exciting quotes from our mail like "Dear Mr. Somers, if you do not remit payment within ten days of receiving this letter, we will be forced to repossess..." But don’t fret! They’ll never take the minibar away. Never! ======================================== *** EDITORIAL *** Pig In Shit #17 Carl Sagan Taught Me to Manipulate Time ‘Pork Avenger’ newest superhero to patrol city by J. Jonah Jameson ======================================== SUPERHEROES are in short supply these days, as we all know, and those that remain are getting long in the tooth. Superman, that staunchest of defenders of justice, is now pushing 70 and has lost a step or two in his twilight years. Spiderman now only appears in public to endorse his line of products or on his speaking tour. The Incredible Hulk, sadly, died last year of a brain tumor resulting from years of apparent steroid abuse. And the list goes on: superheroes felled by age, advancing criminal technology, or their own reckless ways. And there are precious few emerging to take their places. Despite an increasing instability due to a mental state that would land a less renowned (and less wealthy) man in an asylum, we still rely on Batman to fight crime and maintain order simply because there is no one else. The city would love to ask these old geezers to step down, as they are increasingly a threat to the public as much as to the criminal elite -last week Wonder Woman, in pursuit of a horde of rampaging Bog Men under the command of Der Fuhrer of Filth, killed 13 innocent bystanders when she became lightheaded and crashed her invisible plane into a shopping mall. While the wondrous lady recovered and did indeed capture the Bog Men and defeat Der Fuhrer of Filth, the damage to the shopping mall in both money and human lives was almost three times as much as the Bog Men had inflicted on the city in their six-week reign of terror. But with a police force of only 12 middle aged men who are paid mainly to do the paperwork that makes the superheroes’ work legal, the city cannot afford to retire its spandexed crimefighters, and has been stepping up efforts to recruit new aliens, mutants, and mentally unstable millionaires to take on the challenge of fighting crime in the city. Response has not been good. The Mayor stated at a recent state dinner honoring Shazam (wheeled onto the stage by his nurse and signifying his acceptance of a gold plaque by waggling one eyebrow) that "...due to modern techniques of genetic splicing and psychiatric therapy we’re not getting the level of mutants and psychopaths we had in the ‘golden ages’ of 1930-1960. And what with Krypton being destroyed and all, there haven’t been many superhuman aliens in the past decades." The only candidates for superheroship, The Mayor went on to say, have been regular men and women "with a dream. I’m the mayor, it’s not my job to destroy someone’s dreams, but dreams aren’t going to defeat Dr. Lava’s evil plans to construct an artificial volcano in Central Park and erupt it on July 4th, submerging the city in molten lava." Recently, however, a new figure has emerged on the crimefighting scene. Bypassing all the normal avenues of application and interview for a crimefighting spot, this valiant defender of justice has simply begun fighting crime, anonymously. Wearing a pig’s nose and a shimmering suit made of aluminum foil and apparently, pipe cleaners, this new superhero calls himself "The Pork Avenger" and has caused quite a stir within City Hall and both the superhero and supervillian circles: called a ‘poseur’ by Superman in one interview and a ‘cursed bane on my existence’ by the evil Mr. Ragin’ Cajun, The Pork Avenger has been a mystery and a rebel from the moment he stepped on the crimefighting stage. Until now. For, in an exclusive here at the Daily Planet, the identity of The Pork Avenger has been unearthed, and the first authorized interview with this new superhero is presented here. As you’ll see, the city may be running short on mutants and aliens, but there is at least one more mentally unstable millionaire ready to take a bite out of crime. DP: Do you mind if we identify you, Mr. Somers? TPA: Uh....you just kinda did. I’d like to remain anonymous. Without my Pig Suit, I’m just a slightly paunchy man with poor hand-eye coordination. If my enemies knew who I was, I could be targeted by criminal cabals for assassination when I was in my civvies, you see. So you could cut that part where you said my name out loud. DP: Right, so we won’t say that you’re Jeff Somers, world famous millionaire publisher of The Inner Swine and several collected works of pornography. TPA: I’d appreciate it. DP: Let’s get started then, Mr. Somers. When did you decide to become a superhero? TPA: You just said my name again. DP: Don’t worry, we’ll edit it all out when this prints. TPA: Uh, okay. You sure? DP: You’re kinda wimpy for a superhero, ain’t you? TPA: I’m not wearing my Pig Suit. DP: Right. So, when did you decide - TPA: I got mugged by the Wee Willie Gang last year. DP: The gang of midget evil geniuses that Batman put in jail a few months ago? TPA: Yeah. It was very embarrassing, but there were, like, seven of them, and they’re very strong for their size, and they overpowered me. But it was embarrassing, and I suffered a lot of mental anguish about it. I kind of went into left field for a while, walked around the mansion in my bathrobe. For a while I wouldn’t let anyone shorter than me into the place. My butler had to wear huge platform shoes. DP: So you became mentally unbalanced. TPA: You could say that, certainly. Then one night I was inspired: why hide from crime? I vowed never to hide again. I figured I would take the fight to them, and right then and there got my research team out of bed and set them to making a superhero suit for me. I vowed to make the streets safe for me again. DP: How much did the suit cost? TPA: Eleven million dollars, plus catering costs. It’s worth it though. DP: What powers does the suit give you? TPA: Well....none, actually. The money was mostly spent on developing a type of aluminum foil that wouldn’t tear. The first suit was made of Reynolds Wrap and every time I bent a limb it just tore apart. DP: Uh, so what powers do you have? TPA: Oh, powers. Only one, but it’s a doozy. You see, Carl Sagan taught me to manipulate time. DP: Uh...isn’t Carl Sagan dead? TPA: Yeah. But he taught me years and years ago, only I didn’t realize it until last year. Here’s the story: remember that show he hosted, Cosmos? DP: Sure. TPA: Well, there was this one episode I saw when I was about ten. In it, Carl Sagan was explaining the concept of Relativity, and he did this by saying, ‘let’s suppose for a moment that the speed of light is 35 miles per hour’. Then he hopped on a motor bike and went 35 miles per hour, explaining that if that really was the speed of light, he’d be experiencing time dilation as he drove. Everything would seem normal to him, but the world around him would be stuck in normal time. He might go for, oh, a three week vacation in the Alps, and come back to find that millions of years had gone by, because his sense of three weeks was now incredibly speeded up. In other words, it’s all relative. DP: Understanding a simplified concept of relativity isn’t a power so much - TPA: No, but it inspire me to wire time circuits into my Pig Suit. When I want, I accelerate my personal time zone to the speed of light. This means that to me, the world seems to stop still, and this lets me manipulate situations to my advantage, then return to normal time and kick ass. For example, when confronted with a gang of irreverent youths bent on relieving me of my wallet, I go into Light Speed Mode. Because they are experiencing time so much more slowly than myself, I relieve them of their weapons, and wallets, then tie their shoelaces together, and then return to normal time, victorious. DP: Amazing! How did you develop the time circuits? TPA: We don’t know. Someone was trying to run Duke Nukem 3D on a Microsoft NT 4.0 machine and it crashed and a little grey smoke came out, and suddenly, there were the plans. We quickly made notes and The Pork Avenger was born! There was, I must admit, some argument about which one of us would get to be the superhero and what the name should be. Happily, I own everything and everyone is contractually obligated to me. DP: So this is a form of time travel, then? TPA: Sort of. If I were to go into Light Speed Mode and sit in a room for a year, and went back into real time, I’d emerge into the future, since all of you would have gone on without me, in real time. You see, I’m not moving any faster, really, my perception of time is. It’s taught me a lot about time and our relationship to it, you know. DP: Like what? TPA: The most striking thing about people is the shocking amount of time they waste. They don’t think they are, but they are -it’s because so many of our priorities are fucked up, in serious ways. What we think is a wise way to spend your time usually isn’t. It’s like an epidemic of wasted time, because most of what we do is based on the ridiculous assumption that we’re going to live forever. DP: Now, that’s an arrogant assumption - TPA: Is it, goatboy? Let me ask you this: why are you conducting this interview? DP: Uh, it’s my job. TPA: Uh-huh. It’s a waste of time. Most jobs are. You don’t give a ripe fuck about me, or most of the things you do for money. You do it anyway, and at the end of the day there’s a few more hours you’ll never get back. Pretty unfortunate, ain’t it? When you die weeks and weeks of this will flash before your eyes, endless pointless conversations with people like me. A shame. DP: I don’t - TPA: Maybe you’d like to be my sidekick, The Squealer? I have a keen cape you’d get to wear. Of course, you’d be captured and tortured by my Evil Enemies about twice monthly, but there’s a good health plan in it. DP: Uh, no. TPA: Sure, go ahead and waste your life, then. Think about it: eight hours a day, sleeping, rounding out to about a third of your life. One third! My god! Eight hours a day working, if you’re lucky. Another third. All right, let’s assume you eat your Nietche Pops every morning, sipping the hot cup of life’s possibilities, and you only sleep four hours a night and you spend half your time at work doing your own thing and thinking grand thoughts. You’re back down to one third of your life, a complete and utter waste. DP: You can’t not sleep. And most of us have to work. Can you waste time you don’t have any other options for? TPA: Good question. Sure you don’t want to be The Squealer? You’re sharp. DP: Uh, once again, no. TPA: Someday you’ll want the snout, my friend, and it will be denied you, you know. As for your question, doesn’t it all come down to elevators? DP: Elevators? I suspect I’ve lost control of this interview. TPA: Don’t be silly; you never had any. Elevators: I’ve spent several of my minutes observing you people in elevators. You know what you do? You stand and stare straight ahead. You let the time wash over you as an unobserved wave, you waste it. From my point of view, people do this an alarming amount of time: on lines, on public transportation, everywhere. And then BAM! You’re dead, and visions of elevator doors flash before your eyes. DP: What are we supposed to do in elevators, for God’s sake? TPA: I dunno. But isn’t ironic? People everywhere running around screeching that they have no time. People say that to me all the time: I have no time, as soon as I get the time, when things calm down a little and I have some time -come on! Obviously we have oodles of time. We’re just using it to stand in elevators, to ride buses, to watch commercials. It’s not that you don’t have time, is it -it’s that you’ve misplaced time. DP: Interesting -but what does any of this have to do with being a crime-fighting superhero? TPA: Nothing. But it’s an important lesson. If you added up all the time you spent unwisely, you’d have enough there to work a second job, maintain a second family, write books, sculpt busts, foment revolution. It completely invalidates the statement that you don’t have time. Why, if everyone reclaimed just five minutes of Lost Time and spent it crimefighting instead, I’d have nothing to do. If everyone reclaimed ten minutes of Lost Time a day, pretty easy to do, we’d all have an average of one month extra time over an average lifespan. One month -think of what you could accomplish if you actually applied yourself for a month. DP: The mind boggles. TPA: Sarcasm, eh? The final refuge of the weak minded. All I know is, give me thirty really productive days and I could write a fucking book, build a house, bring war criminals to justice. One good month. Problem is, of course, you rarely string together 30 gangbuster days of real productivity, mostly because there’s always those moments of Lost Time to contend with. DP: So...what can you do, then? TPA: The only choice you have is to at least use your Lost Time better, reclaim it as best you can. Every moment you’re standing around with your thumb up your ass is a Lost Moment: don’t let it happen. Read books on the bus, on line, in waiting rooms. Bring a notepad with you and make notes, write poems, draw sketches. Plan carefully. Pay attention. Not just stand and stare, sit and stare, wait and stare. DP: Or, in your case, fight crime and defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice. TPA: Um....if I agreed to that it could be shown in a court of law that I endorsed that phrase, which is property and trademark of Superman’s Supermania Industries, and I could be sued. That guy’s lawyer spends all day writing cease and desist letters, you know. Let’s just say I use my misplaced time to make the world a better place when I’m not publishing a vanity publication or soft core pornography. You know, for kids. There you have it, Metropolis: our newest superhero, The Pork Avenger, with his shimmering aluminum foil Pig Suit which grants him the ability to shift into an alternate relationship with space-time. Aside from making him extremely long-winded and negatively punctual (explaining sheepishly that when you can move at the speed of light appointments become vague and difficult to keep; "After all, to me your time is monstrously slow. I pop off to have a cigarette and when I get back, hundreds of years have gone by and you’re dead. What’s a guy to do?") it has given him the power to halt crime in its tracks. He also has a powerful message about the nature of time and its lack in our lives: stop wasting it! As he is fond of obnoxiously pointing out, most of us waste oodles of time every day, often without even realizing it. Instead of letting time wash over you like an incomprehenisble wave of events, pay attention and use your time wisely, or at least as wisely as you’re capable of. Unfortunately, The Pork Avenger faces many challenges in both his crimefighting efforts and the dissemination of his message: his shocking personal hygeine, which this reporter can unfortunately personally attest to. Until this superhero learns to literally clean up his act, he might be successful in battling evil (probably by overwhelming them with his Superhero Halitosis) but he’ll never convince people to listen to his message. Or have lunch with him. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** THE YUPPIE SCUM FACTOR Time is Our New Status Symbol by Jeff Somers ======================================== "You’re older than you’ve ever been/and now you’re even older." - They Might Be Giants "Life is short. Suck hard" - Somers Family Proverb I AM haunted by the grinning specter of my own death. Anyone who knows me has heard something along these lines at one point or another, me bellyaching that life is short and sleep is for sissies and the Voices, oh the Voices - yada, yada, yada. While it is true that before I know it I’ll be tucked into my death bed seeing elevator doors, sawdust-covered tavern floors, and porno movies flashing before me in lieu of an actual life, I’ve recently discovered something which has eased my suffering a bit: time is, apparently, an illusion, and many modern physicists are theorizing that it doesn’t exist (see http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991016/timeless.html for more detailed information, if you don’t think your head will explode upon reading phrases like "alpha particles, emitted by radioactive nuclei, form straight tracks in cloud chambers."). While this cheerful bit of information doesn’t change the fact that death is inevitable, it does mean that not only will I die, but that I have died and am dying every moment, which takes some of the sting out of it, don’t you know. Time has always been a major concept for mankind, and our short dip in the Time Pool a major source of angst. However, a subtle shift has taken place in how we deal with time’s passing, one that annoys the hell out of me. In the past, free time was the ultimate reward. Leisure and the desire for it drove revolutions, labor movements, reform laws, defined aristocracy and separated the professionals from the duffers. The rich and aristocratic had tons of free time and flaunted it as proof of their superiority, those lower on the scale lusted after free time and recognized it as the greatest treasure in this sad, suffering world: the ability to examine your life, free from the rush of scratching out a basic existence. Today, however, time has finally succumbed to the unstoppable force known around the TIS offices as The Yuppie Scum Factor. Time has been made into a status symbol, its international graphic the cell phone. Specifically, the lack of time has been made into a status symbol, as in the less time you have for everything, the more successful you must be. If you can go sit in the park and read a book for an hour at lunch, you’re a miserable failure. If you spend lunch on your cell phone, closing deals while you eat on the run to your next meeting, you’re a success. Or so the Yuppie Scum would have you believe. This is due to two things: the ongoing acceleration of pace by new technology, and the corporate takeover of These United States, whose Stormtroopers are the yuppies, mindless herds of money-worshiping young men and women in nice suits and worn shoes, stomping around chattering on their cell phones and tapping away at their laptops, goose stepping in time to the pulse of their direct deposit paychecks. These bastards are fucking it up for the rest of us, you know. You can’t really deny that things are getting faster; technology keeps coming up with ways of speeding the pace of the world up. The fact that we’re not constantly amazed that you can have a package shipped overnight anywhere in the world is testament to just how fast things are getting: even the amazingly fast doesn’t seem so fast any more. Communication networks have speeded up, information gathering has been accelerated by the Internet, heck, even travel has gotten to the point where just about anyone can conceive of climbing on a plane and traveling 3,000 miles or more to some distant location. You don’t measure anything in days any more, you measure it in hours, minutes. And with this speed comes our impatience, our expectation that things will happen at a certain pace, that no delays will occur. When phones were first introduced, people expected delays. A long distance phone call was often placed through an operator, who would inform the caller that they would ring back when a connection had been made -often up to an hour after the call was placed. Today such a delay is mind-boggling, unless you live in some distant third world, like, say, Newark. And thus the ridiculous vanity and luxury of the cell phone, international graphic of the Yuppie Scum. The need to be able to place phone calls from any location is questionable, but the image it represents is powerful: that of someone whose time is in such demand that they cannot possibly afford to be out of touch. People who possess cell phones for occasional emergency use do not walk around Manhattan yakking on them. People who cannot possibly spare any time at all, however, do, and the implication is that if you can’t spare any time, you must be important, that you must be a highly-placed executive, working 90 hours a week. Corporate America is, after all, the true government of our grand nation and has been for a very long time (exact estimates vary), and Corporate America measures your value to The Corporation in terms of effort expended. Not results gotten, or tasks accomplished, or even efficiency of work. No, effort expended is the true coin of the corporate realm - which is why there’s such a thing as busy work, why I spend a great deal of my day pretending to work. Admitting that you have nothing to do causes quite a scene in The Corporation. It is the opposite of The Yuppie Scum Factor, which embraces this inane concept, invites it into its heart, and makes it a living nightmare for anyone employed by The Corporation. Because, you see, the Yuppie Scum aren’t satisfied with being The Busiest Mothers in the Universe. They want you to know it to, and be jealous. This is why the rallying cry of The Yuppie Scum is "I don’t have time for that!" The stupid arrogant fucks who subscribe to this lifestyle are constantly telling you how busy they are, how they can’t possibly, how they have to schedule lunch three weeks in advance because they’re booked. This load of horseshit is all meant to be very impressive, because the underlying conceit is that busy = important. Full circle. No longer do we work hard now in order to relax later, today we work hard now in order to be even busier tomorrow. The Corporation wins. The Illuminati are laughing their asses off right now, chums. Putting aside the question of how can anyone possibly be that busy in their everyday lives (if you’re President of a large country or an espionage agent I suppose it’s possible) raises the even more disturbing question of why would anyone want to be, with the obvious but no more attractive answer that it makes them seem important, which is a pretty low price for your soul, you ask me. If you want to seem important, do what I do, grab a baton and parade. When the riot police start beating you into a senseless, comalike unconsciousness free of dreams, you’ll feel very important, trust me. So as I walk the littered and steaming streets of The City and see all these graduates of the Coffee Achievers Fan Club hustling about as if twenty-four hours a day wasn’t enough for their Ayn Rand Atlas Shurgged Existence, I bunch my hands into fists and grit my teeth, shake my head and wonder at the gullible, eager dumbness of people. And then I call in sick and stay home to watch Pinky and The Brain reruns, chortling, smug, and at peace. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** $WINEBUCKS The Money of the Future by Jeff Somers ======================================== Well, kids, as this issue hits the streets of this darkening nation, we only have a few glorious 16-bit weeks before the world ends in the fiery chaos of a Y2K meltdown. Aside from the looting, the military drum trials, and rampant hooliganism this Armageddon will bring us, there will be a concurrent economic crisis. No one’s gonna take MasterCard in the Thunderdome, after all, and the price of a load of bread will likely be one healthy child, good for slave labor. Don’t worry, The Inner Swine is here to save you. My own personal theory of economics has a lot to do with my Mother’s ability to settle my debts and my own innate ability to charm free drinks out of lonely women in bars, a power passed down along the Somers line since the dawn of the race. Since this obviously won’t work for everybody, I’ve been forced to ponder alternative theories of economic management after the inevitable disaster. The fact is, no one knows what the world will be like once all hell breaks loose and we’re at the mercy of human nature, of which I am not a fan, and if left to its own devices the nature of Futureworld will determine the economic structure. Are we going to be living underground in bunkers ruled by the last remnants of the military? One can only suppose that fungi and mold will be the coin of the realm, with the really bright blue ones that glow softly in the dark being the higher denominations. Speaking of glowing, maybe Futureworld will be a horror of radiation, a rocky lunar landscape saturated by dangerous energies. Ointments and salves would likely be the money of that sunburnt world, with ancient tubes of Neosporin being traded like stocks. As you see, there’s no telling what will be valuable in Futureworld, after The End, so it’s difficult to know what to hoard. I assume that since we’re all Swine we’re all interested in hoarding, since there’s nothing better than prospering while all your neighbors are out in the streets begging and running around, screaming and tearing at their hair. Stick with us, fair readers, and you’ll be able to stroll through Armageddon with the resources to hire your neighbors as your Bearer-Slaves, to carry you around on your throne of goats skulls through your new kingdom, formerly known as Bayonne, or Brooklyn, or Pasadena. Swinebucks[1] are, very simply, an easy way to assure that all of us, the readers, writers, and supporters of The Inner Swine, end up being the rich and lazy in the New World Order, assuming that Y2K doesn’t translate into Robot Masters forcing the entire population to work slave labor and wear oily loincloths. If we wait until after the disaster to try and shape the New World Order, it will be far too late, you know. We have to start planning now. The plan is simple: first, take the swinebuck that’s on the next page, and photocopy it. And photocopy it. And photocopy it. Make as many copies of that sucker as you can in the coming weeks. If you can manage to make a million, great! If not, just remember that when that Xerox machine is a useless lump of pre-2000 technology, you’ll be kicking yourself. In-between earning a meager salary as my personal Foot Masseuse, that is. Then, once the Armageddon hits, the simple solution to all our woes is to only accept swinebucks as payment for anything. See, in the post-disaster Futureworld not everyone will have anything to offer society, but some people will, whether it be a valuable skill, like surgery, or a valuable resource, like canned peaches. If you’re smart you’ll have something to offer, too, and let me tell you after you’re done contributing your skill or labor or possessions to the common good of a society rebuilding itself, they’re gonna try to pay you off in barter, or some worthless government scrip. And that’s where all Swine must stand tall and proudly demand that they be paid in nothing other than Swinebucks, and that they can stuff their unirradiated chickens or unpolluted water, you want the only solid currency around: Swinebucks! See, if we all band together as a team of swinebuck-demanding cabal members, the swinebuck will become the currency of the world, simply because no Swine will budge off their bloated butts unless one is dangled in front of them. And that’s when you dig up the valise of photocopied swinebucks you’ve been lugging around and announce your retirement. Will this work? It had better, as I have spent lots of soon-to-be-meaningless American cash on my own stockpile of swinebucks. I am glad to let you know that I’ll be a trillionaire come Armageddon, and would like to take this opportunity to assuage any angst you might have and say that I definitely plan on being kind to my servants and slaves. ---------------------------------------- [1] Fig. 1. ONE SWINEBUCK. Detatch carefully from the page and make as many photocopies as you possibly can. If you need someplace to store hundreds of thousands of swinebucks for the coming disaster, feel free to mail them to The Inner Swine, where we’ll be glad to open an account for you and you’ll even get a free pair of plastic sunglasses! Mail it all now! ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** Livin La Vida Loca on alt.zines by Jeff Somers ======================================== ---------------------------------------- "One thing I’ve noticed since starting up a zine is that it’s the most unrewarding thing a person can do." - Carter Cullen, the mostly silent publisher of My Moon or More. ---------------------------------------- When I decided to start printing this rag back in 1993, beginning a two year journey which resulted in several strained friendships, a lot of disappointment, and 60 measly pages of half baked conspiracy theory and fiction I proudly called Volume 1, Issue 1, I had no idea I was joining an underground. But I was. I quickly discovered that printing your own zine was not exactly an original idea, there were hundreds if not thousands of people across this country doing the same thing, some better than me, some worse. This was finally really driven home when I finally got a PC and logged into the newsgroups, discovering to my delight in early 1996 that there was a newsgroup called alt.zines, ostensibly for the discussion of zining. Here I found a large and loosely knit group of ziners who actively wrote, published, reviewed, and traded. At the time, I had Ken West’s old 386 running Windows 3.11 on about 1k RAM, if performance observations were any indication. This meant that for some time I had to practice guerrilla internet access: log on, and quickly post something blindly before the computer crashed. This meant that I posted several wildly incoherent messages to alt.zines that year, almost all of which were ignored, albeit more or less politely. And then I got a new computer in early 1998, and suddenly I was able to peruse the newsgroup at my leisure. I started posting, and I realized two things: most of the people on alt.zines were interesting and funny and kowledgeable (at least about zines), and Lord help you if you piss them off. The virtual carnage I have witnessed when some churl posted something offensive to the alt.ziners has made me respect them, especially now that most of them have sample issues of TIS in their possesion, and thus know where I live. But don’t think that just because the denizens of alt.zines talk with a bit of swagger and a disdain for bland politeness that they’re just a bunch of mealy-mouthed teens xeroxing pron and angst-ridden anti-school manifestos starring John Couger Concentration Camp reviews - I’ve actually learned a lot from alt.zines, about zines, about people -about (sniffle) life. Things I Have Learned on alt.zines ---------------------------------------- "Practice your ‘Zinester Snort’ -- that little exhalation of oxygen you make when you see zines less-majestic than yours." - Cali Macvayia, the witty publisher of Delusions of Grandeur and Aspirins and Kalashnikovs. ---------------------------------------- I am not the only delicate genius publishing a zine. Hard as it was to swallow for an arrogant fuck such as myself, I did not invent zines, I am not the only one printing one, and I am by far not the most creative person in zinedom. Oh, I’m by far the most affably arrogant chucklehead there and no one can touch me as far as apathetic sarcasm goes, but there are so many smart people putting out zines, I ain’t special. And when I consider that only a small number of ziners actually post to alt.zines, I feel like cutting off my ear and mailing it to R. Seth Friedman, if I could find him in his anti-collection agent bunker. ---------------------------------------- "Criticisms based on your imagination or crack or whatever aren’t worth much." - Agnes DeLappe (a.k.a. Agnes Delightful), who handles A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press’ public relations. ---------------------------------------- You’d better know what you’re talking about. Ignorance is like raw meat in the Thunderdome that is alt.zines, and I have learned to keep my opinions to myself unless I am prepared to back them up. ---------------------------------------- "I may not be the best example of the glories of Free Speech." - Asha Anderson (a.k.a. Jeff Texas), the well-spoken but hot-tempered publisher of Reddog. "I was really trying to play nice, but keeping hostility out of alt.zines is like trying to play pinball with chopsticks." - Kris Kane (a.k.a. Kris from MP&M), long-timer known for his flair for passionate argument. ---------------------------------------- The newsgroup is not for the faint of heart. The language: salty. The attitude: rude. The humor: high. If you never learned to curse, you might survive alt.zines but you won’t enjoy it as much, unless you make up for your tame language with an untamed heart. Most on AZ have both, making for some raucous exchanges. ---------------------------------------- "Y’know, if we just spayed and neutered Young Republicans, we wouldn’t have this problem." - Paul T. Riddell, maintainer of the Healing Power of Obnoxiousness website. ---------------------------------------- A good sense of humor is required. People who show up at alt.zines expecting to seriously and laboriously discuss the politics, heartache, and bad poetry of zining are almost always amazed and offended at how silly we can all be. We all take our DIY publishing seriously, but ---------------------------------------- "They made an ‘Inspector Gadget’ movie and left out Penny and Brain. Everything is all fucked up lately." - Ben Joseph, the most venerable user among us. ---------------------------------------- none of us really see any harm in uncorking some dementia now and then. And if you can’t take a "fuck you" in stride and move on, you will be reviled. People take their opinions very seriously in spite of the silliness. The arguments are long, the speeches impassioned, the insults barbed and the struggles legendary. If you post a serious question you will get serious answers, not to mention a dozen side-fights breaking out over minor details. ---------------------------------------- "fuck copyrights. i print whatever i want to print. of course i’ll ask another zine publisher first as a matter of common courtesy. but this business of the law? to hell with it. the only people who can possibly benefit are people who can afford lawyers." - Vlorbik (a.k.a. Owen), quiet but plaintive sort who publishes The Ten Page News and Indy Unleashed. ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- "I once developed a cure for athletes foot based upon a patented combination of buttermilk and zinc oxide. I’ve travelled extensively in Burkina Faso. I don’t mind saying that I’m also something of a cocksman." - H.D. Miller, the thoughtful, occasionally confrontational publisher of Travelling Shoes. ---------------------------------------- Alt.zines will be the staging area for the eventual Inner Swine Pogrom and Bloody Revolution. During times of great social stress, the Internet has proven to be the communication channel of choice. During the fall of the Soviet Union and the recent ---------------------------------------- "Charade. Reversal. A night of smug pleasure and contentment. Retrenchment. Stasis. The uncool cool rather than the cool uncool. Minds slamming shut in imitation, stitched closed by the pins of body art. Lockstep. Power schmower." - Jeff Potter, alt.zines’ resident philosopher and publisher of Out Your Backdoor. ---------------------------------------- wars in eastern Europe the newsgroups and IRC channels were alive with news and discussion, and often were the only sources of information during these times of crisis. When I give the word and my ---------------------------------------- "What really annoys me is that a third of the messages posted to this group are posted by people who don’t read it. That, and cancer." - Ninj (a.k.a. Jeff), the silliness-loving zine patriot behind this FAQ and publisher of Infiltration. ---------------------------------------- minions throw off their cloaks of normalcy to rise up and take what is rightfully Swine property (i.e., the World) the word will go out via alt.zines. While most of the people reading the newsgroup will not understand the coded messages, it’ll become all too clear when my Pig Warriors burst into their homes and confiscate their publications, since any zine not mine will be illegal under my cruel governance as The Emperor Over the Sea, which will be my royal name. ---------------------------------------- "It’s amazing how the power of my sheer physical attractiveness is felt even through nonvisual media such as the Internet and snail mail. Not unexpected, just amazing." - Jeff Somers (a.k.a. The Emperor Over the Sea), the clever mind behind The Inner Swine. ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- "The girls go crazy for those scrawny/fat, pale anti-social zinester guys! The bloodshot eyes, the paper-cut hands, the breath that smells of stamp and envelope glue, the sense of moral superiority." - Shaun Richman, alt.zines’ ironically named resident socialist and editor of The Torch. ---------------------------------------- So that taste in your mouth now is a little bit of alt.zines. If you pub a zine yourself, I highly recommend that you stop by and say hello; after the initial burst of hostility and paranoia (someone will eventually accuse you of being someone else entirely, trolling) you’ll meet a bunch of really talented people, some of whom will offer you trades of their zines, and some of whom will never respond to your posts as if they’re better than you or something, the filthy bastards. Like any brush with the madding crowd, dumpster diving in alt.zines will result in gems of varying quality. While your mileage may vary, I personally believe the trek is well worth it. Come on and troll us; we love it. ---------------------------------------- "I don’t go around telling strangers to fuck off, fuck you, fuck this, fuck that, and fuck the horse you rode in on, but I do tell people what I think and I don’t beat around the bush in doing so." - Walt Stubbs, forthright newcomer who publishes Fingers. ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- Ed. Note: All quotes used in this article were taken directly from The Al.Zines FAQ, http://members.tripod.com/altzines/, compiled and maintained by Ninjalicious who publishes Infiltration much to our delight. If you are interested in contacting any of the people quoted in order to get a copy of their zine, please feel free to drop us a line and we’ll be more than happy to supply their info (if they have provided it in the first place; some ziners are shy souls). ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** THIS LIFE’s NOT THE BEST LIFE but at least I’m not you. A Day at Work with Jeff Somers by Jeff Somers ======================================== "I was there when Caesar bled and I followed where Moses led I wrote the words Mohammed said, I kissed the ground where St. Paul tred I was best man when Henry wed, I put the crown on George’s head I slept in Washington’s bed, I shot John F. Kennedy dead... I died three times at Waterloo...this life’s not the best life, but at least I’m not you." - Too Much Joy, "My Past Lives" Kids, this issue is vaguely concerned with the nature of time, which explains my feeble attempts to comprehend the Theory of Relativity (no letters, please) elsewhere. Once again, however, I awoke stiff-necked on the bar at a little watering hole called Runway 69 here in New York City, my hair glued via dried Apricot Liqueur to the formica and my pants...well, missing, only to realize that once again it was time to produce a new issue of The Inner Swine and I had not really written any articles that had anything to do with time. Oh, the irony! I lay there waiting for someone to notice and take pity and help me unstick my hair from the bar, wondering how I was going to explain this to my patient and supportive fans -and bam! It hit me! More accurately the bouncer, named Bruno, hit me, several times in fact about the face and neck, screaming at me to get up and get the hell out of there and clean up that mess in the bathroom. And then I realized: what better way to explore the nature of time than to walk you through a day of the biggest waste of time in my life, hour by hour? Our employments are the most vicious time suckers in the known Universe, stripping away days and weeks from our lives without remorse, reward, or purpose, yet few of us bother to try and track their time wasted at work and scientifically determine where, in fact, it goes. I could do that. For my people. I rolled my eyes spastically, desperate to free myself and begin work on this new project, not to mention find a bathroom not previously ruined by my presence and relieve myself. I stretched out one hand towards the bottles lined up by the mirror behind the bar, closed my eyes, and reached deep within me for My Jedi Powers®. After a few minutes of intense concentration, Sandra the bartender took pity on me. "Quit that awful moaning!" she snapped, handing me a bottle of rum. With a liberal application of the liquor to both my hair and my parched throat, I was able to free myself from the bar and almost make it to the ruined bathrooms before the nausea hit me. The force of it, naturally, made me black out. When I regained consciousness again an undetermined time later, I remembered my idea for this article, and so without further ado let’s explore the nature of wasted time via A DAY AT JEFF SOMERS’ JOB I decided that the best way to communicate the sheer waste of everyone involved’s time my ongoing employment represented was to bring a handheld tape recorder with me and make hourly verbal reports detailing my activities. The following are word-for-word verbatim transcripts of my actual recordings made throughout the day on Monday, October 18, 1999. 8:13AM: Whattha - mmph - Whathafuckis - mmph - Ohjesusmyhead - mmph - shit, this thing is still 8:43AM: Well, I’m standing on the streetcorner waiting for the bus. I have two different socks on, I think I accidentally wore yesterday’s underwear, my hair is standing straight up in a horrifying ‘gumby’ do, I have seventeen minutes to make it to work on time, and it’s raining. Time wasted so far: half an hour performing hygienic function I otherwise would have avoided for several more days. Who showers every day anyway? Christ. 9:01AM: Just got off the bus at the Jersey City Journal Square PATH train station. Our bus driver thought it would be helpful to try a new route this morning, since traffic was a little heavy. The scenic tour of familiar Jersey City sights was uplifting, but added five minutes to my commute. I am currently standing behind two women on the escalator who apparently think letting anyone pass them on the way down would somehow cost them points with the East German judge -yeah you, lady, any reason you can’t talk to your girlfriend while standing in front of her? Thanks, your sacrifice will be remembered for generations to come. What’s that? Don’t push me, babe, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. Hey, back off. I mean it. Hey! Help! 9:13AM: I’m now standing on board a tightly packed -excuse me, sir, that’s my crotch- PATH train, which is mysteriously sitting on the tracks, not moving and allowing more and more people to drift onto the train despite the laws of spatial physics which would seem to render that impossible. While we’re -oof, buddy, you stick that bag in my crotch one more time and I’ll Uh....oh no, another seizure! 9:15AM: - so you see, sir, my condition sometimes means I say terrible things to people without meaning - or remembering - any of it. So I’ll just move over there and we’ll forget this whole sordid affair, huh? Great. Have a good day. Excuse me....pardon me...excuse me....hot soup....vomit! I’m gonna puke! Make way! Okay, now that we’re finally on a moving train, I see that so far I have spent forty five minutes commuting, which is such a low level function not even ants engage in it. Uh, people are looking at me, so I’ll get back to this later. 10:15AM: Okay. I’ve made it to the office, gotten a cup of coffee and some aspirin for my hangover, and I am relaxing at my desk, where some evil gnome has deposited mysterious papers with my name on them. I do not know the nature of these mysterious papers, and I strongly wish for these papers to remain mysterious. I am troubled, however, by the fact that my name appears on these mysterious papers so often, and so conspicuously. In the back of my mind where I usually don’t like to look too deeply, a little voice (let’s call it Grown Up Jeff, or GUJ, who has been living in a small cell wearing an iron mask for the past several years) is hinting strongly that since I’ve worked here for five years I ought to know what to do with these mysterious papers. My hangovers are a bitch. The hallucinations are getting really strong. My best course of action, I think, is to go hang around outside my bosses office and see if I can gleam from overheard conversation what I’m supposed to do with the aforementioned mysterious papers. Ugh, this coffee is starting to kickstart my gastrointestinal system - oh jesus - 11:15AM: I am sitting in a stall of the bathroom here at work, where I have been for the past thirty-seven minutes. I see no escape for me any time soon. I will never drink again. 11:16AM: Christ allmighty, I could use a drink. But it would be the last one I ever touched. 11:18AM: Someone just came into the bathroom and despite the fact that the stall next to me is unoccupied, attempted to open the door of my stall for almost forty seconds before giving up, and exiting the bathroom completely. I wonder if I’m hallucinating again, it’s getting hard to tell. 11:21AM: The Porcelain Lurker just loomed over the top of my stall and stared at me for three full seconds. He’s now sitting in the stall next to me. I am desperately trying not to make a...scene...with my situation, because he now knows who I am. Oh, god, the cramping.... 12:15PM: I’m free of the Lurker and back in my cubical. I got a sandwich. The mysterious papers have not only not disappeared, they have doubled in size. There are also now mysterious Post-it notes all over my desk. As I eat my sandwich I am surfing the Internet Uh, hey boss, that’s, um, um, medical research! Medical Research! Uh, no, here let me hit my ‘back’ button, what say? Oh, hey Mary, ha ha, I sure hope you find this as amusing as No no! I didn’t call you over here! It’s all a big mistake! RESEARCH I TELL YOU! 1:15PM: After calming Mary down, I spent forty minutes rummaging through the mysterious papers. Apparently I am supposed to compare two sets of documents for errors and mark corrections. I did a few pages but am now rapidly making progress by not actually checking anything and merely signing off on each page. My job is easy. By my calculations, by the way, I have wasted three hours of my time here at work, not counting time in the bathroom which would have been wasted at home too and time spent actually accomplishing tasks. 2:15PM: The day is starting to pick up now that I’ve started going through the various Post-it notes that have been left around my cube. Many of them are threatening in nature and are signed by a ‘Mr. Buggle’. Here’s a sample note from Mr. B: ‘stop eating other people’s lunches you shit or I’ll break both your legs I know its you’. Obviously a good-natured prank from some fellow employee. Some of the Post-its are from my superiors, giving me tasks to do, which have kept me busy and thus stopped my time-wastage for the moment at five hours and twenty-eight minutes. I’m going on a cigarette break now, hell, I deserve it. 2:43PM: ...um, yeah....okay...oh, you are a dirty little girl, aren’t you. How much? I thought you said $2.99 a minute before. Okay, okay, $3.99 it is, I believe you. What the hell am I sitting on? No, not you, I’m....aw, shit... 3:15PM: I’m in a meeting with almost my whole department present. I’m sitting on the window sill behind one of the plastic plants and I think they’ve forgotten I’m here. After six cups of coffee I need desperately to urinate. My legs are asleep and to get to the door I’d have to literally climb over the Vice president of the company, very possibly urinating on her as I do so...oh christ, they’re handing out more documents. I already have a six inch pile next to me. Maybe If I start banging my head against the window, it’ll smash and I’ll fall peacefully to my death, sixteen stories, happily urinating all the way down, and then I’ll need never accept handouts again. Uh....I have to go to the bathroom, sir. 4:15PM: Back at my desk, where Mr. Buggle has left me more Post It notes, which is disturbing, but the mysterious papers have disappeared. I have fifteen phone messages, three of which are threats. That meeting was a veritable black hole of wasted time, and I now have another hour I’ll be visualizing in grief when lying on my deathbed. That’s the crux of working for a living: doing stuff you wouldn’t do without the spectre of unemployment, humiliation, and homelessness hovering over you. At least I hope you don’t put yourself through this Daily MeatGrinder of the Soul unless you have to in order to avoid unemployment, humiliation, and homelessness -crickey! 5:15PM: Finally, I am out of the office and on my way home, walking to the PATH station. The final bad joke is that even though it’s five o’clock and I’m free, I still have a commute to look forward to. 5:23PM: I’m on the PATH train. I once saw that in Tokyo overcrowding is so bad they have hired men who literally push commuters onto the trains, packing them in like sardines. There are people in the tri-state area who apparently took that image to heart, squeezing themselves into the train as if it were the last one out of Warsaw before the Final Solution. One of these determined people happens to be a God Talker. Here, take a listen: This, I think, is the worst waste of my time yet. Not only am I in a place I don’t want to be, with people I don’t want to be with -no offense, lady- but now I have to listen to the unsolicited opinions of a Goddie mental patient for thirty more minutes. You don’t think working for a living is a horrific suck hole of lost opportunities and wasted time? You probably also enjoy rectal exams. 6:15PM: Well, here I am, home again. Finally, after all that hell, I am feeling fit again, if a little tired. I’ve got a couple of good hours before it all has to begin again, and I’m going to make them count, so much so that I’ll likely not even remember them come tomorrow. I hope this experiment has been as educational for My People as it was for myself. If it weren’t for the humiliation and homelessness, and concurrent disease, starvation, soiling myself, and overnight observational stays in mental institutions that would result, I’d quit my job tomorrow. And so would you, I hope. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** Why Talk Radio Makes me Puke I *am* a sarcastic, mean-spirited white guy, why do I need to listen to ‘em? By Jeff Somers ======================================== Talk radio is the worst form of entertainment ever conceived. It is the greatest waste of my time I can imagine, greater even than having to meet my fans and subscribers. It sucks so badly new words will have to be invented to describe it: it is paugley, jimgery, a load of muutona. It makes me puke. Friends, recently in New York City, WNEW FM changed its format from an ambiguously classic rock to all talk, all of the time. WNEW had been playing popular music of some sort since about 1967, but declining ratings and competition had put the writing on the wall. Needless to say, I quickly deprogrammed WNEW off my radios. It’s completely off my radio radar, and you know why? Because talk radio is the worst form of entertainment ever conceived. Talk radio is where idiots and crazies gather and get paid large sums of money to yammer on about whatever enters their tiny little heads. Sure, it’s free, but it’s free on the subways and streets of New York, too. Plus, talk radio is dominated by white male assholes -I am a white male asshole, I have a talk radio morning program going on in my head twenty-four hours a day, and the last thing I need is some other white male asshole’s opinions fighting for room with my own. Some of these white assholes are talented, of course. Howard Stern’s a funny guy when he takes his eyes off the lesbians for five minutes and does an actual bit. So what’s the problem? The problem is this: just about everyone you meet should probably never speak, ever, or at least not in public. The idiotic mutterings most people dredge up from within in lieu of interesting, intelligent conversation would put anyone with half a brain to shame, but most people not only blithely announce their shockingly ignorant and badly phrased opinions to the public, they do so with a regularity that frightens and confuses me. With a city of ten million souls prattling their opinions and lame jokes at me on a daily basis, why in fucking hell do I want to listen to more of it on the radio? Christ, when I’m struggling for enough consciousness to keep myself from stumbling onto the third rail and electrocuting myself in a soiled-pants hey man nice shot urban legend fiesta I don’t need someone doing a lame verbal assault on the Mayor, or even a witty verbal assault on the mayor. What I need is music. And coffee, light and very sweet. Possibly a vitamin C shot. If the Talk Radio is a Bad Thing, then what’s behind the Talk Radio? Let’s call it The Cult of the Opinion. In previous issues of this ongoing literary nightmare we’ve discussed how being opinionated is so often confused with intellect in this sad excuse for a civilization. To take it a step further, however, it is also obvious that it is not necessarily the quality of the opinions that matter, but rather the style and volume with which the opinion is rendered -a clear indication of how far our race has come since we were squatting by the ponds picking bugs off each other is that in any argument clear thinking can be easily defeated by a vigorous Shout Down. In a society where The Opinion Strongarm is worshiped, naturally the simians I call my friends and neighbors love Talk Radio. It’s perfect: supposedly outrageous hosts exhale their noxious opinions into the world, and if anyone does dare argue with them it is on their turf, which they control completely, enabling them to Shout Down any dissension with scripted insult and technological supremacy. You can’t win those arguments, and if it somehow looks like you might, you get cut off. The simians, naturally, love it, because they worship The Opinion, and Talk Radio Hosts are their High Priests. It doesn’t matter, really, if the opinion is informed, or intelligent, or logically argued. All that matters is that it is entertaining and vigorously defended. Admitting you’re wrong is suicide for Talk Radio, so no matter how ridiculous it gets The Opinion must be maintained. I don’t need this that early in the morning. I have to deal with opinionated idiots all day, every day, why bother tuning in to some more idiots who have as their only real recommendation that they are getting paid to be idiots? Talk radio is a complete waste of my time. Maybe it isn’t a waste of your time, and as much as that frightens me, it’s certainly all right with me, as long as I don’t have to listen to it. Even the supposedly ‘classy’ talk radio, like NPR, with its deep aromas of erudition and public service, make me wretch, and the assumption that talk radio is going to somehow keep you informed about world events or national politics is laughable, and the sort of low-wattage concept embraced by people who like Talk Radio. If you really want to be informed, for God’s sake don’t rely on Talk Radio. Somehow we’ve segued into The Age of The Readerless Illuminati, which is this large group of otherwise educated and reasonable adults who seem to think that all information and education can somehow be obtained without the use of the printed word, through television, radio, and the minimal literary requirements of their new God, The Internet. I love the Internet, and its fun to read articles posted there. But when I really want to know about something, I hit my library, and so should you. I won’t even waste time on Sports Radio. Ever see too fat drunk guys in a bar arguing about Red Sox and Yankees, or who was the greatest basketball player ever? That’s Sports Radio, without the belching and body odors. Am I a smug and irritating man? Yes I am. Thank goodness no one has offered me a job as a Talk Radio host, I’d probably be a huge hit and have to shoot myself. ======================================== *** INTERVIEW *** The Inner Swine Interviews #5 I am so fucking much fun I can’t be compared with you. Ten Questions with Tim, The Angry Clown* ======================================== 1. Explain Jazz. Linger on the topic of how anyone could possibly like it. How dare you fuckin’ ask me that Somers! How dare you ! I’ve played with some of the greatest fucking musicians in the world. I can play in front of fucking five fucking thousand people, and I have to take shit like this? From you! Why don’t you take your fucking clothes and get off my fucking bus right now. I mean it! Get your fucking clothes and get off! I’ll take you as far as Detroit, and you’ve got it! 2. Is it true that Texas is not the best place to be arrested for shooting a man with his pants down? Explain. I’m still pissed about the first question, but any place where there’s men with their pants down and "pieces" spitting lead sounds like a good travel bargain to me. 3. Please explain The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Show your work. Heisenberg bores me about as much as you, Somers. You make me sick. I know the answer. You’re trying to trick me or something. I said don’t laugh any more. 4. You, Jeff Somers, and Charlton Heston go on a romantic cruise around the Caribbean and are stranded on a remote tropical island. The only vegetation is poisonous cacti and there is no other source of food. There is no hope of rescue. Who eats who first, and why? Who invited Heston? I’m not eating that guy. I’m not even sure I’ll blow you, but that would be something to do while I wait to be rescued and taken back home, where I don’t have to eat if I’m not hungry. 5. Can you justify your existence and consumption of valuable resources or are you a useless leech on the body of society? Please explain. Again, I’m willing to blow you, why are you so hostile? Jesus. 6. What do you do for fun in your spare time, aside from sit and stare? What the hell is spare time? What’s wrong if I sit and stare! Fuck you. You been looking for this kind of fight for a long-fucking-time, Somers. Yes you have. You think I don’t know what you’re thinking? I know what’s happenin’, Man. Why do I need this? I am so fucking much fun I can’t be compared with you. When I go to Nicaragua, they know how much fun I am! I am not deluded. You are. 7. It has been suggested that the ultimate tragedy of existence is its futility, the knowledge that no matter how long-lasting or dramatic your influence is, eventually the universe will collapse in on itself and destroy every living thing and every thing those living things created. Faced with those kind of odds, how do you get out of bed every morning? I get out of bed every morning to piss, man. Faced with the alternative, I’ll take the odds. 8. Can I borrow ten bucks until next Wednesday? Sure, Jeffrey. You can borrow all you want. You big hunk of Man you. Are you Gay? 9. What do you see in the following: I see you and me and a lonely apartment rendezvous in New Jersey. Heartbreaking, isn’t it? See question 8. 10. Every morning a man leaves his apartment and gets in the elevator and rides it down eleven floors to the lobby. Every evening, however, he returns to his building, rides the elevator up to the seventh floor, gets off and walks up the last four. Why? The answer has nothing to do with exercise. What kind of questions are these! You make me physically and mentally exhausted. I just want to get going on that cruise, okay? Stop it! I’m not giving out any more shit, okay? ---------------------------------------- TIM THE ANGRY CLOWN is a psuedonym for a person who asked to have his name removed from the web version of this article for fear that it was costing him lucrative job offers. It’s kind of sad that we live in such a world, and that some people are so easily crushed under those wheels. Still, we saw no reason to be bastards about it. ======================================== *** VIRTUALLY ARTLESS COMIC *** Mr. Mute! INDOLENT, VIOLENT MORONS ======================================== I was walking along the frigid streets of SoHo the other day when I had a really bad flare-up of The Moment. I got dizzy and lost consciousness very briefly. I had to sit down on the steps of one of those really snooty and boring art galleries, with the effeminate jackass inside standing by the window, watching me nervously. I first experienced The Moment back in High School, and I’d been battling recurrences ever since, now and again. But this had been a bad one. I sat, trembling, and waited for it to pass. Everybody has ‘The Moment’. Like as not you’ve had it too, whether you realize it or not. What is it? The Moment can best be summed up with the simple phrase is this it? Is this it? Is this all life is? An endless meandering descent into television, Rose McGowan’s navel, Lite Beer and assholes in crowded bars wearing black leather jackets as they push and shove? Is this it? A war every few decades, an election every few years, people thinking they’ve defended democracy by electing Strom Thurmond? That’s the best we can do? Better-tasting fries at Burger King, a new car with some bizarre made up name, a boring soul-sucking job, guilt, hunger, debt and hangovers? Is this it? The Moment ain’t pretty. I smoked a cigarette on the gallery steps, waiting for the physical shock to pass. People react differently to The Moment, of course. Some of us choose to ignore it in the sunny way stroke victims can ignore the fact that they’ve soiled their bedsheets again. Some of us accept it and perhaps revel in it, finding nihilism and its rewarding, comforting bitterness. Personally, I’ve chosen this route and have funneled the murderous rage it generates into The Inner Swine (our motto: numb the pain...by any means necessary). Sadly, some of us decide that this mess can’t possibly be partly their own fault and start railing against society and the evil cabal of political, religious, and corporate interests which are keeping them in this meaningless existential hellhole. Most of the people who fall into this regrettable latter category indulge in a quick phase of activism and revolutionary tendency. They smoke some dope, attend some rallies, maybe dream of really ‘getting involved’. At the end of it all they have a laminated NORML membership card, some hemp pants, a shitty job for some environmental lobbying group, and very little to show for it all as they slide inevitably into category number two, hanging out with me and the bitter but educated Normals. They’re forgiven their momentary lapse of reason, as long as they agree to never again wear the hemp pants. Some, however, follow none of these courses. For them, the concept of revolution remains hot and strong in their hearts. The belief that it can’t possibly be my fault burns into their brains and causes them to work tirelessly for the coming New World Order, when the fucks who created this crappy, fast-food culture will be lined up against the wall, when justice will prevail, when honest men and women will be allowed to triumph, instead of being ground into a fine powder and distributed in little paper packets, like sugar. These loonies have forgotten the one major stumbling block to this concept, however, the one thing the rest of us realize immediately or eventually, referred to around The Inner Swines’ offices as Rule Number One. , the one thing that makes meaningful social change impossible. Rule number one states that the world is mostly made up of indolent, violent morons. Does this make revolution impossible? No. It makes improving the world impossible. You can convince the Morons to revolt over and over again -this rarely takes more than a catch phrase and an absence of police. About five minutes after the revolt, the Morons will happily soil the pond again. Thinking these happy thoughts, I caught my breath, flipped off the effeminate jackass, and wandered off into the grim city, to stir up unrest. ======================================== *** NO CATEGORY COMES TO MIND *** WE LOCKED LEVON SOBIESKI IN THE HOLE FOR THREE MONTHS AND ALL WE GOT WAS THIS LAME ARTICLE How we studied Time here @ The Inner Swine by Jeff Somers and Levon Sobieski, Inner Swine Candidate for President ======================================== Friends, I take my responsibilities as editor of this zine very seriously, or as seriously as you can when you have crippling debts and a tenuous connection to reality. In my calmer moments, at least, I endeavor to make this publication not only entertaining, which is has been on at least three documented occasions, but informative as well. We succeed more often with this second goal, since in each issue you are guaranteed to, if nothing else, learn something about me. But, as always, I yearn for more; more entertaining, more informative, more and better mood altering drugs. SO, when the Board decided to make the theme of the December issue Time, I wracked my brain for a way to educate the average Inner Swine reader on Time, especially since neither I nor any of the staff had any clear idea themselves, life washing over us in an incomprehensible wave of torturous hangovers, cartoon reruns, and court appearances. Obviously if I was going to reach my goal of teaching my readers something about the nature of Time, some potentially life-threatening research on the subject would have to be done (life-threatening since mucking about with quantum physics occasionally results in unwanted nuclear reactions). As I sat in the underground Y2K bunker which also serves as TIS offices these days, drinking Tickle Pink Wine from an endless stream of paper cups, I couldn’t think of any way to achieve this goal, what with all the distractions of daily life which cause you to miss the details of time’s passing. At precisely this moment, however, The Inner Swine Candidate for President, Levon Sobieski, entered my palatial office, sweeping up and cleaning out the ashtrays as is his job wont, and I was hit with a sudden inspiration! In order to observe time’s passing objectively and free from distractions, the observer would obviously have to be locked inside a Sensory Deprivation Tank for a lengthy period of time. Thus the volunteer would have to be either a highly trained professional scientist with a deep background in critical thinking...or an illegal immigrant with no relatives, legal address, and a tenuous grasp of the English language. My eyes lit on Levon, who at that moment was emptying my wastepaper basket into the large custodial cart he uses. The plan came to me immediately: we’d lock Levon in the SDT I’d bought last year during my brief flirtation with spirituality (nicknamed The Hole by my cheerful support staff, who enjoyed pranking me by draining the water out of it and refilling it with various liquids) and leave him there until he had some sort of breakthrough on the subject of Time. We’d give him a waterproof tape recorder for his journal, and when he’d solved the nature of Time we’d release him and see what he’d discovered. Or dispose of the body, depending. LEVON’S SDT JOURNAL 1. Hello? Is anyone listening? Hello? The last thing I remember is preparing myself to clean Mr. Somers’ private bathroom, which always involves...disturbing things, and I usually meditate for some time beforehand. Suddenly, there were hands over my mouth and a mysterious voice whispering in my ear. The voice said "Think about time, motherfucker." and I was knocked unconscious. Now I am...here. It is dark, I can see nothing. I am floating in some warm liquid. There is very little room. Someone has tied a tape recorder to my wrist, which I am speaking into now. I wonder if anyone is listening. I wonder if I have died and this is the afterlife. I had imagined it would be bigger. My mother always warned me this would happen. When I would tell her of my dreams of moving to America and becoming a rich playboy like the famous Hugh Hefner she would scold me and beat me about the head and neck with her stout walking stick, and tell me that if I fell into such sinful thoughts I would find myself in a dark, lonely place. Well, here I am. I had been so proud! With no education I was going to be the President of this country, according to Mr. Somers. Now I am in a dark, lonely place. Oh, Momma, I am so sorry to have doubted your wisdom. Papa was right: you are a witch, and have cursed me. 2. I have been counting seconds in my head for some time now, and realize that I have been floating here for six and a half hours, counting seconds. ‘Think about time, motherfucker’ the mysterious voice said. The expletive was unnecessary, I think. Well, I am thinking about time now. Surely Mr. Somers has organized a rescue team by now, led by that frightening dark skinned man, Ken West, who always steals my lunch and has threatened me several times with physical harm. But he is very good at things like rescues, I think. Mr. West always calls me ‘motherfucker’ too. 3. Hello? If you are listening out there, whoever you are, I am very hungry. And I must urinate soon. Please do not make me urinate in here. 4. I am thinking about time again. I do not know how long I have floated here, perhaps days, perhaps weeks -or perhaps only moments. It is all the same. Happily, I now have company, because someone else has been imprisoned in this dark, watery hell. He is very angry, and somewhat frightening, but at least he is someone to talk to, although he mostly talks about murdering people and getting revenge. His name is Levon too, by amazing coincidence. Perhaps this is some pogrom against Levons. Perhaps the ‘bastards’ that Mr. Somers is always muttering about have caught wind of our campaign for President and are rounding up men named Levon in order to capture me and stop me from becoming president. I realize I have no idea how long I have been in here. Perhaps I have always been in here. I ask the other Levon, but he just starts cursing again. 5. Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!...Time has come today...TIME!... 6. Dieses ist Levon. Ich verlange befreit zu werden. Ich habe jetzt sechs Brüder hier mit mir. Bald sind wir Legion, und Sie können nicht imprison uns! Geben Sie uns jetzt frei oder stellen Sie unseren Wrath gegenüber! 7. Hello? This is the first time in -days? Hours? Weeks?- that I have been able to speak into the recording device. The other Levons (there are very many, I do not know where they all fit in this tiny place) continually intimidate and bully me away from it. They are plotting an escape. From what they have allowed me to overhear, it will be very violent. I am very frightened. I know that is not the way the future President of this country should react to bad situations...but I remember that Mr. Somers has always said that he can make sure bad quotes never reach the Press, so I will give in to my fears. Hello! If anyone can hear me, for god’s sake, let me out of this horrible place. The other Levons push me under the water more and more often...I cannot fight them... 8. I realize now that time does not exist. Secluded from any way of measuring it, it has become meaningless, unobservable. And since I cannot observe it, it cannot exist. It is an illusion, and our slavery to it all for nothing. I will make this one of the planks in my election platform: time is an illusion. Why should people have to wake up at a certain ‘time’ and be forced to work certain ‘hours’? When both are illusions, there is no way to prove whether a particular person is ’late’ or ‘early’. When I am elected, I will change the way these things are done. And if anyone complains or attempts to stop me, I will take a cue from Mr. Somers and Mr. West and make them disappear, now that I have my legion of Levons. I will also make the devices such as the one I have been imprisoned in illegal. What is not an illusion is that I have been urinating freely in here for what seems like weeks, and I must now be floating in something more my urine than anything else. When I escape with my fellow Levons, I will find whoever - wait, what is that noise? Blinding light! I am rescued! I emerge an old, old man, a prisoner lo these many years, I After thirty-four minutes imprisoned in the SDT, Levon was freed by the more or less compassionate Ladies Auxiliary of The Inner Swine Inner Circle, led by Misty S. Quinn, Esq, who wept openly while clutching a gasping Levon to her ample bosom. The other members of the Ladies Auxiliary, it should be noted, detected a distinct scent of ammonia coming from Levon and inched away carefully. I think my point was made, though I certainly cannot articulate it. Thank you for your time. - JS ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** DIFF’RENT STROKES Everyone Needs a Mental Handjob to Feel Good About Themselves by Jeff Somers ======================================== WHEN people describe your Editor here, invariably the word apathetic creeps into the conversation with it’s vowels between its legs. So do the words arrogant, insufferable, rumhead, and/or restraining order (and, on rare occasions, even the words I heard he killed a man in Mexico) but that’s another series of articles better written by my critics, fewer and fewer every year as the TIS Security team hunts the bastards down and makes them take back every word uttered against me. And that’s another article again. But back to apathetic. Your Editor here is not one of the most activist people in the universe. I work for no causes and champion no politics, finding causes invariably futile and staffed by self-involved arrogant fucks more concerned with the fact that they are trying to save the world than with actually saving it, or, worse, hippies, and finding politics to be a grimy hand job in the back alley of life. Pretty much I’m content to sit on my ass, drink cheap domestic beer, and write about whatever enters my head at a given moment. Sometimes this is great stuff, making fine articles or stories. Sometimes it is...not. Still, I allow the environment to wither around me, I allow the Fucks (capital ‘F’ there) to get elected and make a mess of things, and generally make no effort whatsoever to make the world a better place, or at least so The Loonies tell me. The Loonies are all those self-satisfied activists who have convinced themselves that by working tirelessly for their pet projects they have somehow evolved beyond the rest of us. They never realize that it’s all a con job -everything we do is to satisfy our own egos. Everything. You work for peanuts at an environmental lobbying association, fighting the corporate bastards who are destroying the earth? You do it because it makes you feel smart and important. You work 80 hour weeks for Dewey Screwem and Howe so your kids can afford Harvard? You do it because it makes you feel superior, and so you can afford all those coke whores and martini lunches. Now, not everyone who works hard to attain a goal is a Loony; the defining element of Looniness is the hubristic conviction that they have found the one true way. If you acknowledge that not everyone can make saving the Manatee or suing the Tobacco companies or whatever your pet cause is their pet cause, then you’re not a Loony. You’re just wasting your time, like the rest of us, and probably know it, deep down. You see, since everything we do and work for has a selfish and uninspired motivation down inside our own psyches, it’s all a waste of time. It’s all just a way of passing the time until we die, because none of it is permanent. You’ll die, the future generations you’re possibly holding up as reasons for your efforts will die, the world will end, and the universe will eventually collapse in on itself and take any carbon-based life forms with it, cheerfully erasing our existence. Nothing matters. For most of us, however, this concept is a chilling one, and something of a buzz kill. We’re all Pigs, after all, we’re all somewhat convinced of our own Secret Greatness, that til-now-unknown quality of our amazing existence which will make us famous and important to history instead of the scrambling little hamster-on-a-wheel that we really are. Underneath fake humility, hidden away in dark, forgotten corners of our public persona is always the belief that we’re different, that we’re special. That even if everyone else dies horrible, painful deaths after pointless, meaningless lives, we will somehow rise above it all. If nothing matters, than nothing we do matters, and, by extension, we don’t matter. Nobody likes to think like that. The Loonies take it one step further and get violent if you suggest it. Everyone embraces some sort of mental handjob to avoid the ugly truth. We here at The Inner Swine Association for Diff’rent Strokes and Gary Coleman Fan Club (TISADSGCFC) struggle to have a difficult dichotomy in our lives: we’re pretty sure nothing matters, but we accept that we can’t just lie around as a race picking lint out of our belly buttons. We have to do something, after all, if only to keep busy, and so we might as well hedge the bet a little and try to accomplish something for the future, even if we’re pretty sure there won’t be a future. What the hell, we could be wrong -maybe the human race will transcend all the bullshit and rise above it all, and solve death and disease and the end of the universe, and war and poverty and violence and recreational drug use and underage drinking and teen pregnancy and white slavery and environmental crisis and and and - To The Inner Swine, life is like waiting in the NYC Department of Transportation waiting room, trying to get your towed car back: it’s a waste of time and you’re not going to accomplish anything, but you’ve got to do something. There are, of course, a number of things you can dedicate your pointless existence to. We here at The Inner Swine have decided to dedicate our pointless existences to ourselves, and we take a lot of heat for it from Loonies who push their fingers into our chests and tell us, with booze fumes singeing our faces, that we’re ignorant and apathetic as a result. We disagree. Here’s why we don’t dedicate our energies to anything except us; considering the alternative objects of our efforts, we think its clear none of them are right. What else could we dedicate ourselves to? 1. Your job.  I’m pretty much as lazy a motherfucker as you’ll ever meet. I have a slightly different definition of lazy than most of you, however: to me, lazy means not willing to perform bullshit for assholes simply to survive. While I admit I must have a job, some legitimate source of income, I don’t see why I should be happy about it, or why I should put more effort into it than absolutely necessary. People do a lot of things to survive in this world; would you counsel a prison bitch to put more effort than absolutely necessary into pleasing his rapists? Would you tell him that a faked orgasm or two never hurt anybody, and that he’d never get a reach-around with a bad attitude? Come on, people, working for a living is pretty much the same thing as prison rape: you got no choice, and it’s not very enjoyable. If you put more effort into your job than the bare minimum to ensure continued employment, we humbly submit that you’ve moved from the mental handjob to full-scale fucking yourself. 2. Causes. There’s plenty of pain and suffering, destruction and general evil in this world, sure. There are also plenty of people willing to dedicate their simple lives to fighting such injustice, like worker bees. So why do I have to? Someone’s got to write these pointless zines, friends, just like someone’s got to fry the burgers, fix the cars, write the software, provide security, provide entertainment -whatever. While the worker bees are happily spending their time fighting the injustice in the world, I’m free to pursue other things, and why not? When the Loonies start muttering that only fighting injustice matters, I just giggle. It takes Diff’rent Strokes, kids, so you pull your oar, I’ll pull mine, and I’m happy to leave it at that. 3. Love. Here’s a corker. So many people have dedicated their lives to this ultimate ego-trip, it almost offends me. Now, meeting someone and digging their action enough to hitch your caboose to their engine is all well and good, and necessary from a survival-of-the-species point of view, but those of us who turn the pursuit of romantic bliss into a project on par with the D-Day invasion are probably missing a lot more than just a life-partner and are using romance as a convenient crutch. If you can’t bear to be alone in this world, the last thing I want you doing is breeding. Like Eric Stoltz says in Singles: "I’ll tell you about love. Love...disappears, baby!" 4. A Good Time. Now, this is a tricky one. Everyone needs a Good Time now and again. Everyone needs to have a wake-up-in-the-tub-with-no-memory-of-the-evening, who-is-this-trick-in-my-bed-my-god-what-is-that-awful-smell kind of night every now and then. You can’t work all the time, and sometimes the batteries need recharging. For us here at The Inner Swine, this usually involves whippets, strippers, and Old Grandpa Scotch. You may have a different party operandi, but the motive is still the same. However, no one should ever dedicate their lives to the Good Time, like some of the clubbers have apparently done. The only thing worse than someone who has dedicated their lives to pointless effort and work on some cause or other is a person who has dedicated the same sort of energy and concentration to doing hits of ecstasy and seeing the sun rise from a Dunkin Donuts parking lot 365 days in a row. Not only will such a lifestyle severely shorten your expected lifespan, it also tends to take all the "good" out of the Good Time. Anything you do every day and put that much effort into quickly becomes something resembling a job. And that makes it a waste of time. 5. Politics. Ozymandias, thy name is the Electoral College. Politics is a big sand castle and that tsunami looming overhead is the Pushbroom of History. Someone’s got to run the country, sure, but that’s better left to the slow people among us. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And those too dumb to teach get elected. Some people would like me to believe that you can change the world and fix all those nasty little problems if only I got involved, i.e. became politically active. You know: fought to elect candidates who shared my views, campaigned, protested....you know, got involved. Unfortunately the purpose of any government has less to do with addressing the actual concerns of its citizens than with perpetuating its own existence. You might think you can effect serious change in this country, in this world, by getting involved, but you’re kidding yourself. In a two-party system there is no such thing as an extreme, everyone is middle of the road. Electing one over the other just because they agree with your basic view of things won’t amount to much. And there you have it. Call it The Inner Swine Manifesto of Apathy, if you will. While we all have to spend our time doing something and might as well make that something useful while we’re at it, please, there’s no reason to be a Loony about it. The only people I trust are people who don’t believe either that the world can be saved, or that there’s something wrong with me for not putting my energy towards their personal agenda for saving it, whether that be environmental activism, political lobbying, or perhaps anti-media campaigns. The rest of them are Loonies. ======================================== *** BULLSHIT! *** THIS LIFE’S NOT THE BEST LIFE but at least I’m not you The Inner Swine Cast of Characters ======================================== MAIL, we get mail. Counting subpoenas, mail bombs, and the Adam and Eve catalogue, we get over three pieces of mail a week here at the TIS offices in Jersey City, New Jersey (motto for 1999: "Now with fewer whores!") and let me tell you, we read and respond to every bit of it. Recently, Jim Evans of Grit, Montana wrote us a nice letter that raised an interesting question: "This is the third time I’ve tried to contact you. Please stop sending my family your badly written and unfunny magazine. I have no idea how you got my name and address. I mean, who the hell are all you people and why do you insist on sending me this bizarre publication? Stop, or hear from my lawyer." Well, Jim, that’s a great question. Who the hell are we, anyway? In every issue of this rag you’ll read references to all sorts of people, and rarely are their roles and backgrounds explained. In an effort to foster a feeling of family between the TIS staff and its readers, let me present to you a quick overview of the people you’ll find reference to from time to time in this Zine. Of course, it all starts with YOUR EDITOR, JEFF SOMERS. My arrogance is why we’re all here, bubba. If it weren’t for my mad desire to force my ever-deepening sense of disappointment on all of you, none of this would be happening. Several years ago Ken West, Jeof Vita, Rob Gala and myself met in the now-infamous windowless kitchen in New Brunswick, NJ and said those magical words to each other: You know, I’ve never really liked you. I believe that mankind is fundamentally selfish, self-interested, and generally full of shit. And that means all of us. What else can I say? I like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I’m not into yoga, and I have half a brain. Founding Swine JEOF VITA. Aside from being one of the idiots we go drinking with, Mr. Vita usually creates the fantastic covers for our Zine, occasionally writes an article for us, and sometimes bathes, but only after a lot of pressure. An avid fan of comic books, Star Wars, and himself, Jeof’s charm escapes your Editor here, but has rooted itself firmly in others, especially Misty Quinn, who certainly seems to dig his action. Jeof’s art has been published nationally, although his real ambition is to be a Wookie. Founding Swine KEN WEST. Aside from being someone else who always ends his evenings carrying me out of some local bar, Ken is often referred to in this Zine as our Security Chief. What this means is that when we have troubles, legal or otherwise, we turn Ken loose on them and they...disappear. We don’t know how, and we don’t want to know. Ken is actually a Capitalist Oppressor in-training during the day, and makes delicious chili. During his free time Ken is attempting to wire his appliances directly into his brain. Founding Swine ROB GALA. We like to josh about how we drove Rob out of Jersey during our epic struggle for power within The Inner Swine. In truth, no one knows why he fled to Seattle and sends me vaguely threatening notes every now and then. No one. You understand? Out west, Rob struggles to save the world through good old fashioned hippieness, which of course we don’t want any part of. MISTY QUINN, Esq. Aside from engaging in disgusting bouts of public affection with Jeof Vita, Misty is an occasional contributor to The Inner Swine. One of our favorite people to drink with, Misty is distinguished as being one of the first in a very long line of women who have refused to sleep with me just on general principle. In her real life she is a Dave Mathews fan. CASSIE MOORE. At one point in TIS’s grand history Cassie held complete control over us, in the sense that she was our boss and could have fired us for any of the following reasons: our blatant theft of office supplies, our use of office time to write, lay out, and produce this rag, and all those lies on our resume. She chose instead to encourage our alcohol abuse and change jobs to avoid the moral quandary. She remains our Publisher, if only in spirit LAUREN STRUTZEL. Our very own Overall Official Cool Chick has written occasionally for the Swine but more importantly remains an important source of Strutzelosity, of which you cannot have too much. Lauren’s support has been invaluable lo these many years. In her real life, Lauren is frighteningly obsessed with dogs. KAREN ACCAVALLO. Karen is often referred to as ‘one crazy chick’ in these hallowed pages. Why? One reason is the many times she has threatened our lives. Another is my rich paranoid fantasy life. Either way, Karen is an occasional contributor and has been part of The Inner Swine Experience since our first issue back in ‘95, and has valiantly tried to improve our spelling and grammar, all to no avail. Her failure has made her bitter.. In her real life, Karen watches "JAG." BABY LEVON. This is our mascot and trademark. We chose a baby for this because babies are the perfect symbol of the self-obsessed human animal. Baby Levon is your way of knowing that something is Official Inner Swine Product, our seal of quality. Look for it, or suffer the consequences. Consequences fall under Ken West’s field, by the way. MY BROTHER. Sean is my elder brother, who has been trying to kill me since Mom brought me home all those years ago. Every now and then we break Sean out of the Hospital, like B.A. Barracus in The A-Team, so he can write an article for us, but mostly he doesn’t do much and we only mention him in ironic and humorous tones. Still, if you see him on the street, please call The Inner Swine Emergency Number: 1-800-PIGGIES and tell us. There’s money in it for you. ======================================== *** FICTION **** CAN OPEN WORMS EVERYWHERE by Jeff Somers ======================================== Believe me, I know. One touch, is all it takes. I suck it out of your cells like a biological download and your whole stinking, boring life hits me like a ton of bricks. I usually get nauseous. One more cigarette, what the hell? You could see it on their drone-like and passive faces, flushed now with cocktails and nicotine and pointless lust, the whole sad bunch of them, wasting their pathetic lives in offices and bars, bars and offices, an endless stream of coffee and whiskey sours, diuretics that kept them pissing and moaning as the weeks dragged on into months and then into centuries and then into coffins, a sudden and unexpected death as a vein swelled within and said enough of this shit, already, and flooded them out, one eyeball dilating to enormous scale, bloodshot and staring, eternally. And with them the sad fading girls in their demure office outfits, pantsuits and short skirts, white bouses and stockings, high heels and conservative cleavage. Hair up. Expectations down. Trained after all these years to drink like a man, to wobble in on heels and do shots and smoke and curse and tolerate the greedy wet stares they got from all around, desperate to share their brief and unexciting life with some other bottom-feeding wage-earner, pooling their resources to buy a termite-ridden house in the suburbs, raise some uninspired kids, buy a minivan. Was the bar any different from a thousand others in the city, in the state, in the world? Not really. Clientele differed in each but whether it was Martini-soaking wall street types or bikers grousing over nickel beers they were all wasting their time and drowning sorrows they had neither the time nor the intellect to even comprehend. An instinctual drive to gather together and become inebriated and complain complain complain, and then maybe try to procreate and pass their sins on to sallow chubby progeny who would gladly shoulder the burden which would eventually drive them into a similar bar, like a hammer pounding in a nail. Credit cards flashed in the night, lighters illuminated the sweating blemished faces, shirts came untucked and pants got piss stains on them from filthy restrooms and uncareful urinating. Makeup smeared. Eyes got slitty. Cheeks shone red with a warm internal glow. Everyone got drunk, said things they didn’t and would never mean, everyone ate their pride and begged by the end of it all. Good night, see you tomorrow, get home safe -beg beg beg. They didn’t even know it, the poor bastards. They thought they were having a good time, blowing off some steam. I knew better. Or would, eventually. I took off my gloves carefully, feeling desperation climbing onto my back and pushing down, shrieking quietly into my ear. My exposed skin felt bizarre and it crawled in the smoky air of the bar, my hands shaking. I looked around quickly, making sure no one was sitting near me. I hated wearing gloves inside, especially when it was warm outside and even having gloves looked odd. But it was a great risk. I lifted my glass to my lips and managed not to spill whiskey all over myself, my hands were shaking so much. I hunched over my drink like an old rumhead, protecting myself from intrusion. When someone moved near me on my left, I flinched, and looked up, too quickly, strangely, like some madman disturbed. A pleasant-looking guy in a loose, disheveled suit. Looking like he’d been here since five o’clock with no intention of leaving. Ever. Spying my jerky movements, he glances at me. "Hey there." he says , and slaps me on the back just as I raise my drink from the bar. Whiskey slops everywhere and only my frazzled reflexes save my suit from serious damage. My new friend is aghast. "Jesus, I’m sorry!" He practically shouts, diving for some pathetically small bar napkins. "I’m such an asshole. Let me help -" He starts stabbing at me with a handful of napkins, and I have to take a step back to avoid him. "That’s okay." I say, desperately, trying not to shout. "I’m fine, don’t worry about it." He regards me strangely, but turns to sop up the small puddle on the bar. "Well, I apologize, buddy. Let me buy you another drink." I step back towards the bar. "Okay, sure." I won’t turn down a drink. He signals the bartender, and I watch him carefully. I don’t sit down again, more to keep as mobile as possible. I’m ready to dive away at a moment’s notice. I’m having a drink with a complete stranger and I am desperately determined to keep him that way. I’m on the balls of my feet, calculating emergency escape vectors. I am staring at my gloves, more than arm’s length away on the bar, sitting now in a puddle of whiskey. My benefactor orders us drinks, and then shoves out his hand. "Mike Merry." he introduces himself. I stare at his hand and fight not to turn away. "I - I don’t shake hands." I say lamely, trying not to pant. "Sorry." He blinks, and slowly retracts the proffered hand. "Uh, okay." He pauses awkwardly. "Well, listen, sorry about the drink." I watch him go, mostly to keep an eye on his hands. What if he made a dive for me? What if he tripped and reached out to save himself? I cursed myself for taking chances. I sat back down on my damp stool and put my gloves back on. I didn’t expect her to touch me. I usually knew better, when driven desperately out of my apartment, than to stay out too long, or to linger. The laws of the universe started to work against you. Situations arose, and I was getting drunk. You could smell the Nothing on them. I was as boring and useless as any of them , I knew, but at least they couldn’t sense it in me, like I could in them. It crowded around me, the grey, lifeless mass of other people’s nothingness, and I ordered whiskeys to stave it off. I always came out seeking humanity, seeking a temporary release from loneliness. It never worked that way. The fear crawled under my skin and made me bunch up inside and I hated myself, hated the bunch of ciphers around me, hated the motherfucking wood of the bar, shined and buffed by a million sad cocktails slid wetly across its surface. "Excuse me." I turned slowly to regard the woman standing next to me. I’d seen her before, flirting by the jukebox, drinking martinis, trying to appear fun-loving and looking merely sweaty. I regarded her without any of the ice-in-the-stomach fear I should have had. She squinted at me. "I’m sorry, you’ve got something -" I didn’t know what she meant, and suddenly she was reaching up towards my face, smiling a little, moving slowly. I tried to dive out of the way, even falling off the stool was preferable, but I was drunk and something had frozen inside me and I found myself screaming inside but just staring at that slim, pale hand, wearing too many rings, dressed up too much for such plain, liver-spotted fingers. Just staring as it touched my cheek, brushing some bit of cruft aside, dragging the tips of her fingers against my face... It hits me in painful, too-bright flashes. she’s fourteen years old and all the girls in gym class are laughing at her because she got her period a day early and wasn’t ready for it and she’s running for the lockers, crying, cursing god, her family, her gender, wishing she’d never been born and wondering how she was going to show her face in school again she’s five and she’s scraped her knees, both of them, chasing a butterfly outside and she starts to cry and then stops because she realizes no one is there to pay attention she’s thirty-one and she’s sitting in her living room wearing jeans and a T-shirt and smoking Virginia Slims 100s one after the other and listening to Bob Dylan records and just staring, staring she’s twenty-five and she’s six and she’s fifteen and and and I wake up on the sticky, wet, disgusting floor of the bar, a sweaty, shaking wreck. There’re a few people kneeling around me, and one of them, the bartender, reaches for my face. "Hey, buddy, you -" "Don’t touch me!" I shriek. He pulls his hand back, frowning a little. I look around at everyone. I’m panting, they’re stone, cool and collected, staring at me, wondering just what type of freak I am. I sit up as suddenly as I can, and as the blood drains from my head and I feel about to faint, they pull back in sudden reaction. I have a few extra inches. "Are you okay?" It’s her, the woman who touched me. The bitch who invaded my personal space and caused my already unsatisfying evening to spiral out of control, to crash and burn. She’s kneeling not too far from me, a look of concern on her dull, stupid face, caked with makeup. I knew her, now. I knew every boring and gutless detail of her bottom-feeding life and I hated her so much it made me want to throw up. I stared at her in shock, for a moment. She blinked. "Mister? You had a seizure, or something." Or something? I laughed. It just barked out of me, unannounced and ill-advised. This empty shell of a person, this woman who’d slept with her sister’s husband two years ago and who stole jewelry from her friends’ homes whenever she got the chance, this pathetic loser’s life was imprinted on my brain like a scum smeared all over my skin. I knew, from bitter experience, that I’d never be able to wash her off me. I was filled with people like her, useless, boring assholes I knew every detail of. I couldn’t help it, I sneered at her. "Don’t fucking touch me, Carol." I hissed, struggling to my feet. "Nobody fucking touch me." The bartender lost his amused concern. "Maybe you ought to just go." "How’d you know my name?" Carol wanted to know. Not very bright. She’d cheated her way through high school and had even dry-humped her Abnormal psyche TA at a sorority mixer once in hopes of escalating her grade to an A. It hadn’t worked. "Maybe I ought." I snapped. "Step back!" They were crowding in, curious little monkeys. If I had another accidental brush with their tight, feral lives a stroke was a very real possibility. They parted and gave me enough room to slip past them without making any more contact. They were whispering at each other about me, gossiping already, wondering, viciously insulting me. Carol’s voice, in the mix. I knew exactly what she was saying, her words were echoed in my head as she spoke them, reverberating around me and making me dizzy. "I just touched him," she was saying to the bartender, "like this." I just touched him, like this, I thought, and I knew what she was thinking, and another laugh escaped from me as I hurried out into the cold night, staggering a little, and laughing, and all the little idiots on the sidewalk thought I was drunk. I knew what they thought. Believe me, I knew. On the train home I kept tabs on all the other passengers. There were twelve people on the car: three black guys passing a paper bag around and listening to soft rap music coming from their radio, an older Jewish-looking couple seated near the black guys and obviously tense about it, two white kids who looked really, really stoned in their bell-bottoms and shmuck-caps, a middle-aged woman who kept dozing off in her seat, a young man absorbed in his book, squinting intently at the dog-eared pages, and three men in what seemed identical business suits, ties undone, shoes so shiny they glittered at their feet. I pushed myself into one corner of the car and tried to watch them all. No reason to think any of them would have a reason to bother me, but after what had happened at the bar I thought it best to be careful. In the enclosed space the sharp beat of the music seemed louder, bouncing off the metal walls and hitting us all over the head, bludgeoning us. I didn’t care, as long as no one made any sudden moves. Looking this lot over, I knew the last thing I wanted was a peek inside their lives. I shuddered at the thought. I could feel Carol crawling around inside me, settling in, taking up more space in my brain. They said you only used 10% of your brain, but I was guessing I’d topped at least half my own resources, filled with the oily residue of other lives. Carol was fresh, and she slithered in my veins, sympathetically reacting to the physical Carol’s thoughts and actions. For a couple of days, I’d hear her whispering in my head. Then it would all just fade into memories and knowledge. Three days, tops. I was sweating, and the thought of putting up with that ignorant cunt for three days made me nauseous. I got off a stop early and walked twelve blocks. The air helped clear my head and settle my gorge, and my neighborhood was deserted on good nights, much less three in the morning on a Wednesday. There was little danger of running into anyone. I made it my brownstone without incident, and by the time I’d shut my door behind me I’d even stopped shivering. A thin scum of sweat still coated me from head to toe, and my head was throbbing with a Carol Headache. It felt like tumors the size of potatoes had grown in there suddenly, violently. I took four aspirins and ran a bath. As I padded around the apartment, I could hear Carol’s strange and whispered reactions to everything. For a few hours, her imprint was strong enough to maintain some illusion of consciousness, and every now and then a thought would bubble up and I’d hear it, in my head, perfectly. At first this had freaked me out. If it ever lasted more than a few hours, I’d probably shoot myself. As it was, it was just something more to survive. what the hell happened to my feet they’re huge that water’s too hot where am I? Phil! Hilary! don’t feel well....ti many Martoonis I shut her out as best I could. Before I got into the tub I went to my desk, unlocked the lower drawer, and pulled out the marble notebook I kept in there. I turned to the current page, a column and a half of neatly printed names. I took out a blue felt tip pen, and with slightly shaking hand I wrote 93. Carol Langley and put both pen and notebook away. I locked the drawer again, and then slipped off my robe and walked to the bathroom naked. I slip into the hot water and close my eyes, and wait for Carol to fade away. Who are you? she asks, or rather her ghost asks. Shut the fuck up and die already, I snarl back, mentally. I can almost feel her scurrying away to hide in the deeper parts of my mind. It won’t be long, now. It took longer than usual to get Carol to give up her claim to my mind. Five hours, this time, longer than ever before. She kept creeping back when I’d thought she’d disappeared, whispering, demanding to know who I was, weeping, muttering, and I’d scare her off again and try to relax. Finally, at 8:43am, with the glorious morning sun shining through the kitchen windows and a pot of coffee brewing cheerfully, I felt that familiar surge of well-being that indicated she’d finally gone away for good. I still knew everything about her up until last night, just like I knew the 92 others who were inside me. But she was no longer a sentient ghost in my head. She’d faded too much, apart from the original. I didn’t spend a lot of time pondering Carol. The real Carol would go on with her pointless life of drudgery and bar flirtation, would probably do all the usual things, and then die. Having a copy of her on file in my head wasn’t very useful, or very interesting. I knew I would never be able to forget her completely, but it all faded into the background if I didn’t work at it. I sipped strong coffee and watched the sparrows fight over puddled rain water on the roofs of buildings around mine, and thought about myself. I don’t know anything about my condition, my ability, my curse. I wouldn’t know where to begin looking. It started when I was sixteen, a teacher at my school. Mr. Simpson. Nice guy. One of those relatively young teachers all the kids like to joke around with, all the girls think is kind of dreamy in an old-fart way. One day, after class, he shook my hand. In a real grown up way, he called out to me as we were all leaving class, and he congratulated me on a report I’d just handed in. He put one hand on my shoulder and shook my hand, and the whole room swam and when I came back Mr. Simpson and several other faculty members were kneeling over me. And I had Mr. Simpson inside me. He was thirty-seven years old. He was divorced. His wife had taken his daughters three years ago and moved away, never telling him where they’d gone. He’d used to smack her around, not his kids but he’d come close. He tried tracking her down but she’d gone deep, and he’d given up. He drank himself to sleep every night. He only took a shit once a week. He fantasized about banging some of his female students, lurid, complicated, drunken fantasies I didn’t enjoy having in my head at all, though they certainly weren’t much different from my own...but they weren’t mine. So I hated them. I could even remember the plot of the book he’d been reading at lunch. Mr. Simpson watched a lot of TV and wasn’t very academic. He was stuck in a bumfuck High School because he wasn’t very ambitious and wasn’t very smart and he resented everyone a little, because of that. Part of him thought he could be a Professor at a major university, maybe a writer, a poet. But he didn’t have what it took, he spent too many nights drinking vodka tonics in front of the television, he was getting mentally flabby, that was his phrase, mentally flabby. His daydreams about being a professor usually mutated into cheerleader fantasies. He’d read so many Forum letters about mild-mannered academic getting Sorority pussy it had become his primary image of what his life could have been like: the hip, turtleneck-wearing professor getting blowjobs from coeds in return for a good grade. I’d sat up amidst all the teachers and just thrown up everywhere. The feeling of Mr. Simpson inside me was terrible, greasy, disgusting, creepy. When he flinched away from my vomit, I felt him in my head, sympathetically flinching. They sent me home. I was young, and I recovered pretty quickly, but Mom kept me home for the rest of the week to be safe. Over the next three years I ‘collected’ twenty-seven more people by accident. Sudden stops on the bus. Someone touching my hand at a Deli. Kissing Christine Muller behind the gym. Christine Muller, who’d been thinking Christ sakes he smells like liverwurst just before I’d surprised her with a kiss, and then vomited all over her. I at least had the comfort of learning Christine was never planning to sleep with me anyway, and considered our three dates to be amusing but pointless exercises in economy: I was willing to pay for her movies, dinners, and presents, so she would hang out with me, be friendly. I couldn’t hate her for it, even back then. Christine wasn’t such a terrible person, and I knew her better, at that moment, than any other human. She didn’t even tell anyone I’d puked all over her favorite pink T-shirt. It taught me my lesson, finally, and I started being more careful. I had twenty-seven people inside my head, all their memories, their thoughts, and it was already too many. I knew then that there was a limit to it all, and the day I reached it was the day I lost myself, pushed out of my own head by an army of...ciphers. Even being careful, I’ve collected sixty-six more. It’s just impossible to completely avoid casual physical contact in t