======================================== *** THE INNER SWINE *** Volume 6, Issue 4, December, 2000 www.innerswine.com ======================================== "What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death." - Dave Barry CONCEPT BY: Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita COVER ART BY: Jeof Vita EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers PUBLISHER: Cassie [REDACTED] WEBMASTERS: Jeof Vita, Ken West, my own bad self ADVICE & FREE DRINKS: Actively seeking wedding invites for the open bar opportunities CORRECTEUR D'EPREUVES EXTRAORDINAIRE: Karen Accavallo STAFF DISSIDENT: Rob Gala OVERALL OFFICIAL COOL CHICK in absentia: Lauren Strutzel LEGAL COUNSEL: The Duchess OFFICIAL GUILTY PLEASURE: Playing M.U.L.E. on my Commodore 64 Emulator 48 hours straight. Ken West understands, bubba. FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: The Duchess, for her endless supply of support and excitement which, while exhausting to witness, is a joy to experience; Misty S. Quinn, Esq., who is still one of my favorite people after all these years and intervening dramas, and who remains my drinking partner even as we age; R.A., the "At Home Political Commentator", whose friendship continues to surprise me with unexpected nuance and cheer; Jeof Vita, who is easily the most talented person I know, aside, of course, from myself; Ken West, for distributing baseball post-season tickets fairly and consistently; Cassie [REDACTED], for remaining part of TISIC despite the damage we can do to her newly minted married reputation; Lauren L.J. Strutzel, who is still my Overall Official Cool Chick, only now she is the OOCC in absentia; Clint Johns at Tower, who is Da Bomb, yo, and has been for quite some time; Karen Accavallo, for not forcing us to go pick apples this year, and, as always, for helping me eliminate at least some of my grievous errors in this rag. ======================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================================== EDITORIAL: "PIG IN SHIT#21: BREEDING FOR DUMMIES" COMMENTARY: "IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN: YOUR HUMBLE EDITOR'S ALL GROWED UP" WHINING: "JEFF SOMERS IS MR. POOPY PANTS: TOP TEN THINGS THAT ANNOY ME ABOUT MY FELLOW ZINE PUBLISHERS" BULLSHIT!: "TIS GOES TO THE MOVIES: THE SHINING." COMMENTARY: "GETTING PIGGY WITH IT" COMMENTARY: "AMERICAN WEDDING CONFIDENTIAL #8: GABBA GABBA HEY: ONE OF US" INTERVIEW: "TEN QUESTIONS WITH CASSIE [REDACTED]" VIRTUALLY ARTLESS COMIC: "MR. MUTE!" COMMENTARY: "FEAR OF A FREE WEEKEND: TIME AS STATUS SYMBOL PART TWO" COMMENTARY: "THE SUBLIME LYRICS OF AC/DC" COMMENTARY: "I WANT TO BE FROZEN WHEN I DIE SO I CAN BE TRIUMPHANTLY REVIVED WHEN THEY CURE DEATH" FICTION: "TIME'S THUMB" ---------------------------------------- The Inner Swine Volume 6, Issue 4 (ISSN: 1527-7704). Magazine published March, June, September, and December by Oinking Sow, Inc. © 2000 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!) but stop teasing me, you're never going to order a subscription, you heartless bastards. Free trades are absolutely entertained, send me something, and I will mail you treats. Checks payable to Jeff Somers, Editor. Address submissions and correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, 293 Griffith Street #9, Jersey City, NJ 07307, mreditor@innerswine.com. But let's face it, when was the last time we published anything not written by me or one of my cronies? Other people's pimply writing gives me hives. Still, all submissions or requests for Guidelines (there are no guidelines, though) must be accompanied by S.A.S.E. We accept liquor in lieu of cash, which is a little known fact about us. Misty S. Quinn (left) once bought us a drink. We often think of that, in our darker moments, and the memory of the free pint always makes us smile. Misty is the best of people. ======================================== WHAT THE FUCK'S BEEN GOIN' ON? ======================================== EMPEROR JEFF OF SOMERIA: According to my deep and thorough understanding of Einstein's theory of Relativity and all subsequent work which has grown out of it, we are all always in constant motion. Yes, even sitting on the toilet reading this, you are moving through the universe. You are moved through it by the Earth as it rotates its way through the void, and you are moving through time. Moving through time is like being on a huge slide in a playground. You pop out of the womb at the top and start accelerating towards the bottom, where Death waits to catch you, chop you up, and send you to hell (or maybe that's just me). When you start off, it goes slowly. As you gain momentum and overcome friction, you start to pick up speed, until at a certain point in your life, you're completely comfortable with your velocity. But of course we continue to gain speed, edging on faster and faster, until our velocity is no longer comfortable, its frightening, and that's when we get desperate, and is usually the first time we see the dark shape waiting for us at the bottom, smiling in welcome, our old friend. Perhaps the greatest point in our lives is that middle point, when we've attained a comfortable speed. Past the grinding dullness of youth, but not yet in the clutches of the End's gravity pull, we coast, at perfect balance with our perceptions and our acceleration. Albert Einstein said that the first flash of his famous theory occured to him when he was working in a Patent Office in 1907, when he realized that "If a person falls freely, he won't feel his own weight." In the middle of our lives, crusing along at a speed which matches our decline, we don't feel our own weight, and that is a marvellous thing. Recently, I noticed that the World's Most Annoying Advertising Campaign had inexplicably changed the actor who starred in it. I glanced up as the zippy music for one of those "TV Guy" ads for Toyota came on my television, only to discover a new (but hideously similar) actor had taken on the 'role'. This bothered me for a few reasons: one, it made me realize how long they've been excreting this particular ad campaign -how in the world does 'TV Guy' sell anything? Who watches that commercial and thinks, well, that talking TV Guy makes a lot of sense? Second, it made me contemplate the squalid existence of someone who not only lists 'TV Guy' as his biggest gig, but who couldn't even hold onto the role. It's bad enough to be a Actor-Whore willing to shill whatever and play any type of embarrassing role. The Actor-Whore might comfort himself (between drinking binges) with the cold thought that, if the universe makes sense, it couldn't get any worse. Then, to actually lose the job of being a talking television set that pops up in zany situations to inform people about all the great Toyota values out there -my goodness. What could the reason have been? Did TV Guy demand more money? Did he demand more artistic freedom? Or did he blow his brains out one rainy evening in Hollywood, leaving behind a sadly misspelled suicide note explaining that TV Guy had ripped his last vestige of humanity away? Prompting, of course, the advertising agency to hire another square-jawed nobody to read the insipid jokes and find the motivation of a sentient television entity shilling cars. It made me momentarily sad for the Actor-Whores of the world, crawling around this world, mouths open and ready to eat whatever shit comes their way. Then I figured they deserved it, so fuck 'em. ======================================== Everybody's talkin' at me... Here's what they're saying about ME: ======================================== Davida Gypsy Breier of Xerox Debt, Leeking Ink, and The Glovebox Chronicles (PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078; leekinginc@hotmail.com) fame recently initiated a trade with us, and had this to say: "Thanks for sending The Inner Swine...I enjoyed it quite a bit...I ended up reading it at many of Baltimore's finest red lights (my only free reading time the last few weeks). I've tried to take a look at your web site a few times, but each time I call it up the voice thing comes on and someone walks into my office." Well, we hate to sound like some sort of techy geek, but there is a volume control on your computer. Unless it's an Apple. I don't know if they've invented a volume control that meets Steve Jobs' standards yet. (JUST KIDDING you rabid Apple people - jeesh.) Along with this nice note came a few of Davida's zines, The Glovebox Chronicles and Leeking Ink. Both are very nicely done, with a good, clean layout, crisp printing, and a friendly overall feel. Glovebox, which is about people's experiences in cars, is close to my heart because I still grieve for the loss of Laverne, my '78 Chevy Nova. And Leeking Ink was fun to read, and I found myself really agreeing with the following statement: "My fellow commuters keep asking if I am a college student...because I am always reading and writing. It is a sad commentary when it is assumed the only people who read and write are people who are forced to in their youth." Plus, I was intrigued by the guy who will draw your dreams in cartoon-style. I highly recommend all Swine throw $6 to Davida for all three of her publications. Issue #4 of Xerox Debt also reviews TIS: "It took me well over a week to read the first issue I received of The Inner Swine, as I was limited to reading at red lights on the way to and from work. When I recieved the second issue, it jumped to the top of my zine pile queue and I read all 60 text-dense pages in one sitting. A criticism I've seen noted of Jeff's zine is that it is egocentric. Granted, Jeff is Jeff's favorite subject, but it's a subject that is presented warts and all, with humor, and never seems to veer into whining self-absorption. Despite the frequency of his issues, the quality is high. His enthusiasm for the written word flows off of the page. The issues I've read are a mixture of well-written fiction and personal pieces." Actually, Jeff is only my second-favorite topic. My favorite topic is Spam. Some guy named Eric Lyden sent us Fish With Legs ($1, 224 Moraine Street, Brockton, MA 02301-3664, ericfishlegs@aol.com) along with a funny note that read, in toto: "Jeff, Please trade with me and bring a tiny amount of glee to my sad, pathetic life. Thanks a lot in advance." We can't resist openly pathetic entreaties for basic human pity. So we traded with him. New Number One Fan Greg Trainer sent me an impossibly enthusiastic email: "The new issue is great!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for giving a shout out to me!!!! Keep up the good work!!!! If I ever get a full-time English teaching job, I will make my students read one of your stories and write a response to it. I promise. Furthermore, if you want, I can send you copies of the response papers and you can reprint the best one or ones in The Inner Swine!! It sounds like a good idea! What do you think?" Certainly, if anyone wants to add TIS to their lesson plan, we're happy to oblige. As a matter of fact, we have a bunch of specially-prepared textbooks for just such an eventuality, entitled Nothing You've Been Told Even Makes Sense: How Every Adult You've Ever Known Has Lied to You. A twelve volume set, we'll sell it to any teacher out there at our special professional discount price of $3,500.00. We're touched that Greg likes us so much, and since he is the only person so far who has offered to teach our writing to impressionable young minds, we're proud to name him the first (and so far, only) TIS Field Marshall. Greg is hereby charged with spreading the Swine gospel and defending, with deadly force if necessary, our honor. Plus, there's a really cool uniform with these wicked boots and a really cool-looking overcoat. Karl Wenclas checked in with Zine Beat #2 ($3, King Wenclas Promotions, PO Box 42077, Philadelphia, PA 19101) wherein we are mentioned in the "Stars of the Underground" section: "'The Inner Swine' is one of the more unusual performers to appear in zinedom. He's hyperbolically centered on himself, mugging goggle-eyed in his photos and prose for the cameras. He's the true 'writer' of zinesters, he asserts. The rest of us are 'movementeers'; faceless members of the pack. He's the One, the Favored Son. How much of Jeff's egotistical act is a put-on?" Most of it. None of it. Who knows? Even I'm beginning to slip into the soft madness of blurred persona/personality. Oh well. Like those wise men of the 80's Quiet Riot once wrote, "So you think my singing's out of time/well it makes me money." I will say that I don't think everyone but me is a movementeer, though I do seem to have coined a term there. Jeesh, try to arbitrarily fit everyone into neat categories and everyone gets pissed off, who knew? While I suspect that Karl keeps mentioning me in his publications because he knows I can't resist giving him free publicity, I'm like one of those cocaine monkeys: I can't stop hitting the button. Zine Beat is part manifesto, part perzine, part review zine. It's actually pretty interesting. Send him some money, unless you're one of those people who won't read Dianetics because you're afraid that subliminals will brainwash you. THE SILLS REPORT: Like any conscientious organization, TIS is concerned about customer satisfaction (no, really). Towards that end, we devised a Customer Survey to determine what we do right, and what we do wrong. However, since most of our readers have the attention spans of toads, we didn't bother sending out more than one survey. Why generate thousands of useless, misspelled responses when we have mysterious genius Dan Sills on our subscription rolls? We mailed Dan a copy of our Reader Survey in August, and he kindly devoted a tiny percentage of his huge, sexually throbbing brain to improving TIS, and we're grateful to him, even if he did ignore most of our suggested answers, preferring instead to scrawl his own box marked OTHER. Here are the questions we gave Dan, and his responses: 1. How did you here about us? My roommate Lauren inflicted you upon me. 2. How much of each issue do you usually read? 0%. I 'read' the future by interpreting the ashes of burned TIS copies. 3. Have you ever use this periodical in a manner not intended by the Lord Our God? There is no way to disgrace a copy of TIS, since it has the least grace of anything that exists or that can be dreamed of, or no longer exists. 4. What would you like to see more of in each issue? Topless chicks. 5. When the revolution comes, we can count on you to...Give you up faster than my little ho' cousin gave it up in summer camp in '82. Dan has our undying gratitude. His bizarre yet oddly beautiful answers will guide our marketing strategy for years to come. Watch for future issues featuring topless chicks, seer-cum-prophet burning kits, and more wisdom from Dan. G. Philips of Motion Sickness ($2 to PO Box 24277, St. Louis, MO 63130; philsick@swbell.net) sent me issue #10, which contains a (gasp!) review of The Inner Swine 6(1): "This was a difficult read this time around. I just wasn't as interested in most of the stuff that Jeff was talking about. If you're unfamiliar, The Inner Swine is an exercise in ego of sorts. Jeff picks a topic or rant and adds his sarcastic humor. There's a funny piece on the top then things that will lead to his evetual demise (cars, humans, booze, cigarettes, etc), a couple of fake interviews with members of his staff. Well, not fake, but not exactly real if you know what I mean. It's hard to describe this zine without making it a term paper, it's just a twisted, sarcastic, booze influenced (at times) ride through a guy from Jersey's life." and 6(2): "Loads and loads of text and rants about all different aspects of Jeff's life...he has a 'Top 5 Professions That Will Get You Damned to Hell' and one of them is bartender which scared me back to Catholicsm...It's a smorgasbord of different things and yes, there's the alcoholic theme running subtly in the background most of the time. Definitely unique although it left me mixed again. I guess I dug about half of it." Having someone write that they dug half of a TIS issue is pretty amazing, to me. Sure, I love it when people say they loved every word in the issue, but realistically half is an amazing percentage, and I take it happily. Motion Sickness is a nice-looking MMR-like publication. There's lots of ads, and band interviews, both of which bore me, but some of the columns were cool, the "Women in Punk" and "Favorite Show of All Time" were interesting reads, and they gave the last NOFX album a good review, so send them two dollars and stop your bitching. Someone calling themselves 'The Grey Future' sent us an email: "Hello Mr. Sommers, I read your zine last night, highly amusing, except for that fact that the word "ennui" showed up on damn near every page...After reading your zine I find it to be very humorous and somewhat creative. Unfortunatly this also means I find you very frightening and probably mentally unbalanced...I have been doing my own zine off and on for a quite a while so I will say I could appreciate the fact that you put the least amount of work into your zine as possible and it still looks like more than overpriced toilet paper...p.s. I'm glad I'm not the only man on the planet with a mortal fear of women I've pissed off." All I can say in my defense is that the overpriced toilet paper thing is totally, 100% on-purpose. Our new friend Andy also sent us an email: "hey mr editor. i found TIS lurking on the shelves of Tower Records here in Dublin, Ireland, and decided to up my indie-cred by purchasing it. and then I started reading it and I couldn't stop until I got to the end. and then I went back to tower and noticed that there was a lonely looking older issue hiding behind some more worthy publications. and I bought that too, and it had the same effect. please make your zine less entertaining and readable so that I can do something more productive with my time.thanks.andy" I make no promises, so I let no one down. There are no guarantees written on the cover, so you can't claim I betrayed you. If this magazine sucks, you must assume that it was meant to suck, and that you ought to have known better. If it's good, you must assume it's because I'm a motherfucking genius who deserves all the money you can afford to spare, maybe more. Well, that's it for this issue's mail bag. A note to my adoring public: I will no longer be honoring requests for locks of hair or sweated-in items of clothing. While in the past I have been happy to send such items in response to polite requests, recently I have come to have a dread of genetic cloning, and I am terrified that one of you will make a copy of me, have the real me shot, and that I will never know the difference. This may have already happened, which disturbs me. That said, enjoy the new issue! It's got all the usual crap (say it with me!): uninformed opinion, humorless sarcasm, and the sort of nausea-inducing navel-gazing no one enjoys. Enjoy! ======================================== *** EDITORIAL *** Pig In Shit #21 BREEDING FOR DUMMIES Procreation Is Not Always a Beautiful, Momentous Thing by Jeff Somers ======================================== WITH a title like that, piggies, I feel like I should open with a cheerful exception, the sort of maddening exception that makes so many of my readers chaff at my vagueness and lack of credibility: I don't think that just because you choose to have children you're dumb, bad, or less-evolved than me. While I certainly think most of you are one or more of those things, that opinion has nothing to do with which side of the breeding equation you fall on. I will admit, right here in this first paragraph, that having children is a natural and honorable process, that it is quite possibly one of the most challenging and difficult tasks we have as human beings, and that anyone who has raised children to be kind and productive members of society with minds of their own should feel a little smug about a good job done well. On the other hand, having children is an instinctive, primitive process that requires absolutely no intelligence, morality, or character to achieve, and simply fathering or bearing children doesn't single anyone out for kudos. And simply keeping your offspring alive until they're legally not your problem is not the same as raising them. In other words, kids, I do not feel that just having kids is some sort of amazing miracle, I do not feel that just because you have chosen to breed makes you a better person, or even a fit person, and I fervently wish that the baby makers in this world would shut up about their amazing journey towards parenthood . It's an amazing journey that billions upon billions of anonymous and largely unexceptional people have taken in the past, nothing you're experiencing is new, or interesting, or in the least special, and we non-breeders are sick and tired of you acting like the cosmos is working through you. Okay? ======================================== DUMMIES TIP: I have a friend who has the right idea about breeding. While I am sure they were awed and excited when they had their children, they never ever let that self-satisfied hubris spill out into their interactions with other people. When I would politely ask about the pregnancy, I got a nice practical shrug and a smartassed comment about nausea and bladder control problems. Contrast this to the weekly reports of what the fetus is doing inside me today you get from other people, and you learn to appreciate my friend's practical smartassed-ness. ======================================== 1. Anyone can do it. My god, have you watched Montell or Ricki Lake or any of those shows recently? Have you seen some of the yokels sharing your amazing journey towards parenthood? Now, if we had some sort of National Screening Program for potential parents, if becoming a parent was similar to becoming a fucking Astronaut, well then, I'd say you had something to be really proud of. But a pair of fourteen-year-olds with a bottle of schnapps and a backseat can do it. Hell, cretinous celebrities like Michael Jackson and Catherine Zeta-Jones can be parents. There's just nothing to be proud of in giving in to your biological imperatives like a bunch of rutting monkeys, sorry. The pride of parenting, I think, is when you're piping your eye while junior gets sworn in as President or takes questions from the floor about their cure for cancer. Just having sex until the bun is rising isn't anything special. 2. Your kids might just as easily be Charles Manson as Charles Lindbergh (or, hell, Charles Rocket, for that matter). Genetics is a wondrous mystery we're just scratching the surface of. Why people imagine that just because they've managed to attain adulthood without killing themselves in accidental idiocy or contracting any seriously debilitating diseases makes them ideal candidates to ensure the survival of the race, I'll never know. One of the miraculous things you observe in young parents is their ability to take simple, instinctive things in their babies and turn them into watershed events in history: Parent#1: OH MY GOD! HE'S PUKING! IT"S HIS FIRST PUKE! Parent#2: Look! HE'S TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING! Baby: Aaaaaaa-oooooooooga! Parent #1: He's a genius! Not all parents suffer from this illusion, but too many of them assume that just because your child's brain exhibits typical higher functioning, he's the next Mozart. Sadder still are the ones who start their infants on programs supposedly to speed up their learning, the parents who are on the phone with Harvard the day after delivery, instructing the Dean of Admissions that little Binky was clearly observed tapping morse code for PLEASE SUE PHYSICIAN WHO SLAPPED MY ASS while he lay in the ward. Certainly any child can grow up to be a genius, at least until we crack the genetic code and we'll all be able to order little Hitler-youth babies. But the same odds apply that your child will be incredibly dumb, the sort of kid you'll spend a lifetime bailing out of jail. Or, worse, just normal: an average Joe with a degree in business, eeking out a decent middle class life with his rubbery wife and his own kids. The evidence on early-on training is inconclusive. No matter how much classical music you play for your kids, they may still fail to change the world. Sorry. 3. Too many people act as if having children is all about them, about fulfilling something they need in their lives, instead of about the fucking kids. I think we've all had the spooky feeling that the humongous pregnant woman sitting across from us, nattering on and on about her wonderful life, just views the soul growing inside of her as the next step in her wondrous life of achievement and success. Bearing children in today's day and age is no longer really about perpetuating the race. We're perpetuated, baby. Oh, some of the doomsayers will point out that ecologically the planet is in the red zone, and I feel duty-bound to point out that any creature that can die in so many ways should never feel too safe, but generally speaking our problem these days is overpopulation, not staying one step ahead of the extinction line. Since reproduction is no longer something which must be done feverishly, constantly, in order to keep the race going (since we no longer have to have sixteen children apiece just to ensure that two of them will reach adulthood), it has almost morphed into a status-symbol. What do you get the couple that has everything? A baby, of course! Having children is seen as just another step on the road to being fabulous. First, you get into a good school. Then, you start dating a good-looking clone of all your family and friends. Then, you get a good-paying job in an expanding field, begin your career fast-track. You get married to aforementioned clone. You buy a house. Maybe you move around a little, buying better houses, enjoying the money and your youth. What then? What do you do when you own the Beamer and have a vacation house on the shore and everything has settled into that watch-TV-in-bed-by-ten-having-drinks-with-the-goddamned-Smiths-tomorrow-night rut? What do you get the couple that has everything? A baby, of course. And once they have the little rugrat, we go directly into 4. All the yawning about how wonderful and amazing it all is makes me think you're just making the best of a bad deal. Let's look into the facts of babymaking as I see it (which may or may not have anything to do with the actual facts; Jeff's Facts are an amazing amalgam of fancy and bitterness): 1. once people decide to have kids, sex generally turns into an operation of military precision, with all the romance and lustiness of a Boy Scout fall-in. 2. Pregnancy itself is a nightmare of garish bodily mutations, mood swings, celibacy, and general uneasiness. 3. Having an infant is like having a ten-pound tumor that prevents you from interacting with other adults in civilized discourse - you can't go anywhere in public, and if you do, your evening will be ruined when the little tumor starts expelling Fluid of the Day and screaming. 4. As the kid grows into something with a discernable will of its own, you'll end up spending your whole life driving it places, watching it do things, or cleaning up after it. After a lifetime spent driving junior to baseball games, school functions and the like, you'll stand exhausted and fifty-five, unsure how to fill your day now that the kid has gone off to drink himself senseless at college. Armed with these facts, I turn a jaundiced eye to parents who piss on and on about the wonder and amazement of parenthood. The desperate gleam in their own eyes tells me they've considered selling the kid, more than once, and very seriously. 5. As the world wearily staggers towards an ecological and population-size disaster, I think the lofty status of parent is slowly changing. There was a time when raising a family was a respectful thing to do with your life. The world needed people, and more every year. These days, however, I think the status of parent has changed. As the worm turns, parents are seen more and more as self-centered over achievers who must now live through their children, making sure the little tykes always win, always have the best of everything, and never ever have to deal with pain or disappointment. These are the people who get into fistfights at their children's little league games. These are the parents who threaten teachers who dare to give their kids low grades for bad performance. These are the parents who buy their children everything and then wonder why their offspring have no respect for property, or any intention of getting a job any time soon. Frankly, parents to me means just another pair of morons who think that in the same way that they bought their car, haggling and willpower, they will make their kids into possessions to be proud of: rich, good-looking people with lots of trophies on their shelves. So few of them still raise their kids. If you do raise your kids - and by that I mean you instill in them, through a slow process of discipline, advice, praise and punishment until they are intelligent, kind, thoughtful beings capable of not only living their lives but in doing so with respect for the world around them- then I certainly agree, you deserve respect, status, and everything else for your efforts. Nothing is harder than raising a child into adulthood. But I do believe that simply being a parent -simply fathering or bearing a child- no longer accords you that status automatically. These days, you have to earn it. I am not a parent and so am probably speaking out of my ignorant ass about all of this. But I have sat on airplanes while children run amok in the aisle, and no one has disciplined them. I know people who seem to believe that the world will step aside and provide for them, and this attitude is a direct result of bad parenting. I have listened to more than one person wheeze on and on about their impending biological convulsion which will gift this world with yet another baby as if it were of historical significance that Jim Smith or Mary Jones decided to breed. I have observed breeding in this day and age and say with confidence that it is, for the most part, for dummies. Of course, I am bitter and have only my own garish existence by which to judge all of you, and I'm sure you'll all go on happily breeding until one day, sitting in the Game Room at some State-Run Old Age Home while your kids go through the uncomfortable motions of giving a shit about you, you'll turn your puckered and ravage visage on each other and nod, silently admitting that I was right. Breeding is for Dummies. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN: YOUR HUMBLE EDITOR'S ALL GROWED UP By Jeff Somers ======================================== "Show me a young man who isn't a Democrat, and I'll show you a man who has no heart. Show me an old man who isn't a Republican and I'll show you a man who has no brain." - saying I picked up somewhere and god help me if I can remember where. THE Year was 1993, and believe it or not, no one had, as yet, heard of The Inner Swine. Egads! Well, no one aside from Rob Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita, myself, and a few other scattered people we spent time with back in the day. Before MP3s (I didn't even own a computer back then), before Britney Spears (what could such a wasteland have been like?), before Pokemon, before Pulp Fiction, for god's sake. We're talkin' seven honking years ago. That was the first time The Inner Swine had any kind of form. In those seven years, I suppose I've grown as a person, somewhat. Seven years is a relatively long time, relative to how long you've been pissing around this here world. Seven years is a fourth of my life, right now. When I'm seventy, it'll be a mere tenth, and have less significance (unless the context is Mr. Somers we predict you have about seven years to live unless you put that Martini down immediately). Right now though, the realization that it's been seven years and twenty-fucking-one issues since the moment Rob Gala suggested the name 'The Inner Swine' to me made me pause and think. I think I always need a few pages of filler, I thought, so why not wheeze on about my personal evolution for a while? Make lots of references to my drinking, my general loserness, the usual. They'll eat it up. What's different? I won't bother with the physical changes, of which there are many but few indeed I wish to share with you. We all know that aging at any time of your life is a discomfiting and generally alarming state - it was alarming when you were twelve and started into the jungle of adolescence, and it remains that way today- so why bother going on and on about it? Good, we're agreed then. No paragraphs about my bad back or strange new hair growth or hemorrhoids. Unless I need to fill more space in this rag, of course. Then the title of this article changes to "A Celebration of My Various Bodily Functions" and we spend six pages on The Time I Accidentally Cut My Scrotum and It Would Just Not Stop Bleeding. Anyhoo...I sat down with myself and a bottle of Skyy Vodka recently and asked myself some hard questions, trying to determine how much I've evolved over the past seven years while publishing this amazing literary masterpiece. The answer, of course, is not very much, as most of you snickering bastards know. The gift of being this shallow and self-centered is being able to avoid any and all self-improvement. But in certain areas, some surprising, I have shifted a little. For example: ---Politics--- In 1992, believe it or not, I voted in a Presidential election. I can't recall my reason why. It might have been the simple, dumb fact that it was my first election. I voted for Bill Clinton. Why? Because George Bush senior was and is a cocksucker. He was eminently qualified to be President, of course, but the whole cocksucker thing soured me on him. It really had nothing to do with politics. It had everything to do with the cocksucker issue. Today, I have evolved into a non-voter, and nothing you say or do will ever dissuade me from this stance. Unless the AntiChrist himself is running on the ballot, I will never grace a voting booth ever again. My reasons are a little too weird and long-winded to put down here, but I'll sum up by saying that if you think you're changing anything in this world by pulling the donkey lever, I believe that you're sadly mistaken. ---Driving--- I am proud to say that I very recently decided to stop Driving Angry. This isn't as easy as it sounds, you know. First off, I had to realize that I was, indeed, an angry driver. I always used to think I was a calm, and peaceful driver, coexisting with the fucking shithead motherfuckers who share my road, quite against my will. A few accidents this year have taught me otherwise, and a kind and gentle presence in my life quietly pointed out that I tailgate like a mother, drive too fast, and tend to rear-end people with disturbing regularity. In other words, that I am the Typical Jersey Driver. The shame! Today, I am actively seeking enlightenment, and have recently admitted that I have a road rage problem, and have hired a team of wrestlers to beat me over the head when I exhibit signs of Driving Angry. It's healthy to admit you have flaws. Except for the beating over the head. That isn't healthy. Might have been a mistake, actually, but its too late now; I prepaid two years' worth. Que sera sera! ---Money--- Back in 1993, I was a walking black hole of money. No amount of it, no matter how small, escaped my Event Horizon. Sucked into my voracious gravity well, the money was magically transmorgrified into debt, which was then hung around my neck so my fellow man could have opportunity to mock me. Today, I am a slightly smaller black hole. Oh, my complete inability to comprehend money remains: I get a paycheck, and within moments it has transmorgrified into debt and a handful of small black spiders. But I am at least aware that owing thousands of dollars is no way to live, and I've taken steps that will ensure I am debt-free within 73.46 years. I'll be 102 years old, and then the Good Times can begin! ---Technology--- In 1993 I was virtually a luddite, I had a stereo that dated back to the 1970s and a car to match, and that was the height of my technological savvy. I could have been magically transported back to 1973 and noticed nothing until I discovered that Iron Maiden hadn't yet released an album, at which point I would've broken down into tears. Today, I am in full-on Geek mode all the time. Sure, I dislike some of our technological wonders (cell phones, instant messaging) but I have burrowed into my PC like a worm fleeing light. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. ---Fashion--- In 1993 I pretty much wore the same thing all the time: jeans, Chucks, T-shirt, flannel shirt, baseball hat. Most of the clothes dated back to high school. While I was not going to win any GQ awards, I certainly was comfortable every day of my life. Today, I wear the same thing all the time. To work, I wear jeans and T-shirts and occasionally a dress shirt when there's a reason (like convincing them to fire someone else instead). Otherwise its jeans, Chucks, T-shirts, and flannel shirts. Oh, and a few pairs of pants from Banana Republic that Legal Counsel The Duchess bought for me. I wear them with Chucks and make her crazy. ---My Morbid and Near-Paralyzing Fear of Death--- Nope, that's still the same. SO, not much has changed, eh? Oh well. I guess we'll all have to keep our breath held waiting for my personal evolution. At this rate, I'll be an old, old man before that happens. ======================================== TIMELINE OF MAJOR EVENTS IN THE PAST 7 YEARS OF JEFF'S LIFE 4/25/93 - Meeting with Founding Swines to discuss possibility of self-publishing magazine together held in infamous windowless kitchen in New Brunswick, NJ. Ends in tragedy, name-calling, and some food-throwing. Meeting was recorded for posterity, but analog tape was subsequently damaged in a bedwetting incident years later, best left uninvestigated. Only final words of historic meeting are still audible: "See you in hell, Somers." The speaker is unidentified. 10/23/93 - The Toronto Blue Jays win the 1993 World Series, ending the last baseball season with the traditional playoff structure. Jeff joins millions of baseball purists in moment of silent protest of the travesty, but ends up getting drunk and punching wall, breaking two fingers. Over the coming years he crytically blames the injury on Phil Rizzuto. 6/10/94 - Jeff packs up 1978 Chevy Nova with clothing, maps, and a box of 100 Pop Tarts and attempts to drive across the country to Seattle. He makes it as far as South Dakota, where the Nova, named "Laverne", starts to spew black smoke, which Jeff takes as a mystic sign from the cosmos that he is needed back in New Jersey, sort of like the 'Bat Signal'. He still believes this. 8/29/94 - Jeff is hired by small Medical Publisher in New York City as an Editorial Assistant. Upon learning that he will be paid in live chickens until he earns a promotion, Jeff rushes to sign up for 23 credit cards. By midnight 8/30/94, Jeff is $13,000 in debt and knows what a stomach pump tastes like. 5/1/95 - The first issue of The Inner Swine is published. No one reads it. 5/13/96 - Almost dies in car accident while conveying beer to party thrown by Misty Quinn and Cassie [REDACTED]. Last words before unconsciousness: "Save the beer!" 7/4/96 - Jeff travels to Seattle with TIS Security Chief Ken West and his cadre of female assasins to track down and 'remove' Rob Gala permenantly. Gala gets West drunk on Tickle Pink Wine and turns fembot assasins against Jeff, who must hide in local YMCA to save his life. Later, recovering in a State Facility, Jeff realizes that the whole trip had been a hallucination stemming from some stale Fruit Loops (box later found to be dated 1973). 3/6/97 - Jeff acquires first personal computer. Wastes no time in downloading porn. 1/1/98 - In startling epiphany, Jeff realizes he may well be the worst-dressed individual in the world. 4/23/99 - Historic visit by Jeof Vita, Ken West, and Somers to city of Chicago. During Bataan-Death-Drive from New Jersey to Illinois in fifteen hours straight, Helsinki Syndrome sets in and Somers reveals deep, dark secrets to his fellow tourists. They mock him mercilessly. Jeff adopts new motto: "Never try." 8/28/99 - Jeff scores hot chick The Duchess through patented combination of cologne, alcohol, and a fake Italian accent. The Duchess' friends are concerned, and an intervention is staged -unsuccessfully, thank goodness. ======================================== ======================================== *** WHINING *** JEFF SOMERS IS MR. POOPY PANTS TOP TEN THINGS THAT ANNOY ME ABOUT MY FELLOW ZINE PUBLISHERS (In no particular order) by Jeff Somers, Mr. Poopy Pants. ======================================== 1. When they send me their pathetic zines with nothing but a note (sometimes a photocopied note) which says REVIEW ME. The arrogance is breathtaking, as if there were legions of heretofore unknown zine publishers who have nothing better to do. Am I a Review Zine? Nope, and a cursory glance at TIS will reveal that to anyone. 2.When they include a big stack of random advertisements for other people's zines, or when they send me a stack of their own ads and ask me to distribute them to everyone I mail something to. I don't work for anyone but myself, and I am never asked if this is cool before they mail this shit to me, so fuck them. 3. Spamming the alt.zines newsgroup with what seems like hundreds of postings which merely announce, over and over again, a new issue or updated web site. Certainly, one posting to this effect is fine. Twice earns you a scowl, three times in the span of two days and I'm mailing you a dead rat. 4. The ones who assume that just because I put out a zine, I must be 16 years old. 5. When they bitch and moan about a 'bad', 'inaccurate', 'biased' review in one of the Review Zines out there. Nothing makes me want to read the damn thing less than a bitchy letter in ARGTTUP. Hell, at least someone's reading your goddamned zine. Suck it up, silky boy. 6. The ones who email me out of the blue and ask me to link to their web site, without offering to link back, or even hinting that they at some point even read my zine. I'm happy to link with people who either link to me or have given me support of some sort (money, advice, service, genuine criticism) but an email from a complete stranger urging me to up their hit counts? Fuck 'em. 7. The ones who submit stuff to me without asking first. A long time ago in a far-away land, I did implore my readers to submit works to me. This stopped in 1996, when I stopped kidding myself and realized I only had interest in printing my works. Since 1996 I've printed a few pieces I didn't write, but all of them were either commissioned by me (translation: I begged a member of The Inner Swine Inner Circle to write it) or just randomly caught my fancy. The only indication that TIS entertains submissions is in the boilerplate on page 4, which reads in part: "Address submissions and correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, 293 Griffith Street #9, Jersey City, NJ 07307, mreditor@innerswine.com. But let's face it, when was the last time we published anything not written by me or one of my cronies? Other people's pimply writing gives me hives. Still, all submissions or requests for Guidelines (there are no guidelines, though) must be accompanied by S.A.S.E." This is set in 7/8 type at the bottom of the TOC, and I just can't believe anyone reads it. In any event, the statement is not asking people to submit, it is just warning you that if you don't include a SASE with your submission, you'll probably never hear from me. I don't mind the occasional submission, but don't just mail me 65 poems and expect me to care. 8. Their endless, endless first-person naval-gazing. I am rapidly coming to believe that the worst part of zines is when people select any pointless episode in their lives and write about it in painful detail. Why do they assume their rambling, pointless tale about what they did two months ago is interesting in any way? At least have a compelling reason to write about your recent unemployment, or personal crisis, or whatever. And yes, I'm aware of the irony of complaining about this in a first-person narrative, dammit, but at least I'm not telling you a supposedly interesting story about my life. 9. When they gripe at me about some aspect of how I handle my zine that they disagree with. I don't recall signing a membership agreement in some fucking Underground Press Society, and I resent being treated like I did. Don't like bar codes? Fuck you. Don't like poetry? Fuck you. Think I ought to be more active politically? Double fuck you. The beauty of self-publishing is you don't need to care what anyone else thinks. 10. Handwritten zines. It sounds romantic, sure, and I guess when you're thirteen you can get away with it. I've had a typewriter since I was 10 years old, no kidding. Is it that fucking hard to peck out a few pages of material? Even when your handwriting is legible, it's generally annoying, because its either filled with hearts-for-dots or little doodles or just frightening personality hints. While even in this age of cheap computer access some people are still without, typewriters are cheap. Buy one. Handwritten zines blow goats. Watch for future commentaries from Your Humble Editor's shadowy alter-ego, Mr. Poopy Pants, in which he will bitch about all the other people who irritate him. That's a lot of people, piggies. ======================================== *** BULLSHIT! *** TIS GOES TO THE MOVIES: THE SHINING Stanley Kubrick's Magnificent Failure By Jeff Somers ======================================== The beauty of this little zine thing is that I write about whatever the hell I want to at a given moment. Sometimes this is good stuff. Sometimes it's crap. In the democratic world of self-publishing, crap and quality get equal billing, and have the same chance of making it into an issue. Who benefits? No one, really, since the reader gets stuck with crap (and often doesn't realize it until they've wasted their time reading the article) and I don't get paid for these issues anyway. It's a wash. Maybe if you paid me, I'd write better articles. Doubtful, but the chance is there. Perhaps I'll start a TIS Gold Club. Anyone who joins for $50 a year gets one issue with the good stuff, all the crap boiled off. Let me know if you'd be interested in that. So, I get to write about whatever I want. Today, for some reason, I want to write about The Shining, which I recently bought on DVD. I'm a big fan of Stanley Kubrick's movies, and I've always liked The Shining, though to be honest I couldn't, until recently, explain why. There's so much wrong with the movie, it's amazing that a certified anal-retentive detail-oriented control-freak like Kubrick made it. The flaws in The Shining are huge, its commercial success aside, and many of them are so baffling they defy the usual academic explanation afforded Kubrick's other films by his fans; 2001: A Space Odyssey is a hard film to swallow and seems somewhat ridiculous on the surface, but plenty of people have written lengthy apologies about the movie that make you, at the very least, watch it one more time with a thoughtful attitude. Okay, you think, sure it seems ridiculous, but maybe Kubrick was thinking that deeply when he made it. Enough is known about Kubrick's nearly-psychotic control over every aspect of his movies to make it believable that the most subtle and complex reasoning lies behind his most baffling choices as a filmmaker. The Shining, however, is a tough one to explain, and I've read them all, baby. I've read theories which have the whole movie as a huge metaphor for the white man's oppression of the Native American (a theory drawn almost entirely from the Overlook Hotel's Indian decor and a single line from the film concerning the "white man's burden"). I've read even more ludicrous theories, too. Watching the film on DVD recently, I started to think about the movie again, wondering about two things: a) why I found the film so engrossing, after all these years, and so disturbing and b) why I was always so pissed off at it by the end. Watching it on DVD was the first time I've seen it uncut in about 15 years, too; I have a videotape of it recorded off of channel 11 here in the NYC area years and years ago. Needless to say, I was missing about 30% of the movie on that taped version, and the DVD version brought back a lot of things I'd forgotten about. I started to realize for the first time why I felt so strongly about this movie. Here's my theory, with some bits and pieces borrowed from others I won't bother to name because they'll never read this: The Shining is a brilliant study of a man who is going insane, with some minor supernatural touches, but in the end it abandons its own internal reality and that's when the film descends, rapidly, into a pretty lame horror riff, salvaged only by Kubrick's great choice of final shots. Since you've read this far (amazing!) let's talk details: *** 'the worst nightmare I ever had' *** The film is about a man's descent into insanity, resulting in his deranged attempt to kill his family. Let's forget Stephen King's book. Certainly, Kubrick did. The film takes the basic plot of the book and some of its ideas and goes in a different direction. The fact that Jack Torrance is going crazy, seriously crazy, from the moment we meet him, is transmitted to us in a couple of subtle ways: Time structure and Jack Nicholson's seriously deranged performance. ---Time--- Time is at the heart of this movie. Every major plot point in the film has to do with time. There is Jack's past, which he can't escape, and which he rails against often. There is the five months of isolation in the Overlook Hotel, which becomes a heavy, smothering weight pretty quickly. And there is the eternal quality of the Hotel itself, with its frozen black and white photos of times past, the eternal twilight of the snow-covered surroundings, the vastness of its maze-like halls. Most importantly, however, there is the way the movie is edited, and the part titles which divide the movie into sections: The Interview, Closing Day, A Month Later, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, 8AM, 4PM. The movie starts off with a reasonably accurate time-scale: The Interview. This is a natural beginning, it's easy to mark it as the beginning of the story, and its placed clearly in the Torrance Family's timeline (they've moved from Vermont about 3 months before). Closing Day follows, which also makes sense, and A Month Later is clear enough -although already the perception of time is telescoping, from definite events to a more vague 'a month later'. A month later from what? We assume it's a month after Closing Day, but is it? How can we be sure? From there, it gets more confusing. Tuesday. Thursday. Saturday. We've not only jumped from taking time by months to days with nothing in-between, but we have no way of knowing, really, whether the Thursday mentioned is two days after the Tuesday, or two weeks. Or even if they are in chronological order. As the movie proceeds, time gets more and more specific (moving from events which have no intervening time indicated to months, to days, and finally to hours within the day) while getting less and less informative. 4PM, for example, is a very specific moment within the day. But which day? The same day as 8AM? We don't know. It's subtly disorienting, because on the surface everything seems to be orderly and clear, but when you think about it, you really have no idea when events are taking place. This disorientation extends to the characters themselves. Most obviously, there is Wendy's discussion of the family's recent history with the Doctor near the beginning of the film, wherein she tells the story of Jack dislocating his son's arm in a drunken rage, and finishes by saying that something good came of it, because he promised to stop drinking and he "hasn't had any alcohol in 5 months," giving the viewer the impression that Jack's sobriety and his son's injury both occurred five months before. Jack later confirms that he's been on the wagon for five months, but reveals that the incident involving his son occurred 3 years before - so the film's own internal time perception is skewed from the first scenes. It is almost impossible to accurately reconstruct the film's timeline without making assumptions for which there are no basis. The disintegration of time perception neatly dovetails with Jack's physical and mental breakdown. In the beginning, where there is still a semblance of order (a semblance because Wendy's talk with the doctor reveals the corruption of time already) Jack is neatly groomed and interacts with his soon-to-be employer and his own family in a polite, genial fashion. As time becomes more muddled, Jack does too. He gets more slovenly, and his interactions with other people (his family, the only other people around) become more and more distant and awkward. The loss of time clarity and the surfacing of Jack's insanity are clearly linked -because the movie is about Jack's insanity. The film is, subtly, from his point of view. As he goes crazy, time starts to get muddled, and eventually loses all meaning, as he gets his wish to stay at the Overlook "forever and ever and ever." ---Jack--- The character of Jack Torrance is pretty obviously a man on the edge from the very beginning. His interactions with others, even while ostensibly 'sane' at the beginning of the film, are stilted and strained. Kubrick has always treated dialogue within his films as an ordeal; he films most of his conversations as a series of cuts from one character to another, with too many awkward pauses, resulting in an off-beat exchange without rhythm: sentence-cut-beat-sentence-cut-beat-sentence. The technique makes the viewer uneasy, and viscerally communicates the fact that Jack Torrance doesn't feel comfortable, because he's losing his ability to relate to other people. The viewer gets the impression that Torrance is laughing at jokes not because he appreciates them ,but because everyone else is laughing, or that he responds to promptings with memorized remembrances of what a proper response should be. Driving with his family up to the Overlook, Jack's overlong pauses before responding to his family's conversation conveys the impression of a man who has to put physical effort into those responses. As the film moves on, Jack retreats from his family more and more. His conversation with them becomes surreal and angry: first, he tells his wife he can't spend time with her because he needs to write, but he spends his time in his makeshift 'office' throwing a ball against a wall mindlessly. Not much later he angrily informs his wife of a new rule, forbidding her to enter his office when he's there, because she breaks his concentration - thus shutting her out of his life. His final conversation with his son in their apartments, in which he tells his son that he "loves" the hotel and that he wishes he could stay there "forever and ever and...ever," is strained and oddly paced, with Jack staring off into space while he desultorily answers his son's questions. Danny, throughout the whole exchange, stares slack-faced at the ground, trapped in his father's arms, clearly aware that the wrong answer or question could cause trouble. Finally, we have Jack's interactions with the 'ghosts'. Are they ghosts? At this point in the film, I'd say no. Consider: Jack has been retreating from reality. He doesn't want his responsibilities, he can't handle them. He flees from his family, his responsibilities as a Father. He flees from his job as caretaker -Wendy is shown doing his duties while he sleeps in his 'office', having nightmares. Jack is losing touch with reality. When he is 'falsely' accused of hurting Danny again, it is the final straw, and he retreats from reality completely, stalking angrily into the Gold Room and having his first interaction with a 'ghost': Lloyd the bartender. Jack is not at all surprised or concerned to find a bartender and suddenly stocked bar in the Gold Room. He refers to Lloyd by name and greets him familiarly, all indicating that Lloyd is not a ghost of the Overlook, but a bartender that Jack used to deal with back in his drinking days. Feeling low, angry, and losing his grip, Jack conjures up a comforting vision and starts drinking mentally. Jack is also, tellingly, facing a mirror. All of Jack's interactions with the 'ghosts' -Lloyd and Grady- occur while Jack is facing a mirror. He is clearly talking to himself. Watching his exchange with Grady in the blood-red bathroom, in particular, the viewer notes that Jack is staring into the bathroom mirror throughout the entire exchange. He does not look directly at Grady. He is looking at himself. He's crazy, plain and simple. ---'people who shine'--- Up until the end of the film, the only 'supernatural' aspect in the story is Danny's psychic ability. Although it is insinuated that Danny can perceive actual events either in the future or the past, it can certainly be interpreted that the only psychic ability Danny actually displays is an ability to 'receive' the thoughts and mental images of others, specifically his father and Halloran the Chef. In the story, Jack Torrance is informed of the previous tragedy at the Overlook, namely Delbert Grady's murder of his family, just before his son has a psychic image of blood flooding the elevators and of the two twin girls. Throughout the story, Danny's psychic episodes are always either initiated by Halloran, or directly connected to Jack's temper. When Jack gets angry, Danny has visions of blood and the two dead girls. Not once in the film does Danny have an independent image of the 'ghosts' haunting the hotel, always it is either an image of blood (representing Jack's rage and murderous impulses) or of the twin girls. One would imagine that if Danny were having visions of actual events in the hotel's history, he would be plagued by a variety of horrific images, not simply one which has been prominently placed into the mind of his father (Grady's murderous breakdown) and an image so general (blood spilling into a hallway) that it could represent any number of grim emotions, events, or impulses. What Danny is picking up, like a radio receiver, are the insane ragings of his father. Aside from Danny's ability to read his father's mind, the other 'supernatural' aspects of the story occur completely inside Jack's mind. He is the one conjuring up grisly images of Delbert Grady's murderous breakdown; Danny merely sees the psychic echoes of his father's unbalanced obsession. Jack is the only one, up until the very end, who interacts with the 'ghosts' -and only two of these ghosts are identified in any way. One is Lloyd, an apparently familiar face from Jack's drinking past, conjured at a moment of extreme unease and anger, and the other is Delbert Grady, a name and a story Jack had heard just prior to moving to the Overlook, and of whom he has been thinking quite a bit. The only other 'ghost' Jack interacts with is the naked woman in room 237, which would seem to be a moment in the film, prior to the ending, where the 'ghosts' affect someone other than Jack, when Wendy reports that the woman in room 237 has attacked Danny. However, a closer consideration reveals that this is hardly certain. Danny is seen entering room 237, but we never actually see him interacting with one of the 'ghosts'. Instead, we cut to the scene of Jack having a nightmare about murdering his family. Danny appears, mute and obviously abused. Wendy assumes immediately that Jack has hurt their son again. Considering Jack's general mental state at this point in the film, it must be assumed to be entirely within his capabilities. This accusation, as we've discussed, also pushes Jack over the brink into complete delusion, where his fantasies start to take on reality for him. The woman in room 237 starts off as a fairly standard sexual fantasy for the married Jack: he enters a room, and there waiting for him is an anonymous woman, fresh from a bath, ready and willing to have sex with him. The fantasy quickly turns horrible for Jack, but hey, he's crazy and not a little self-loathing -it isn't surprising that his sexual fantasy turns into a nightmare of impotence and disgust. It is also a reasonable assumption then that Jack has had this image in his mind for quite some time, a cherished fantasy. Sitting at the bar, speaking with his new friend Lloyd, enjoying his first drink in five months, he conjures up a pleasant sexual image, and his son, attuned to him in a way he barely comprehends, picks up on it, and reports it to his mother, who naturally assumes he is speaking of a woman he has actually met. When Wendy reports this woman to Jack, he makes his way to room 237 -where he more than likely beat his child only a short time earlier- and brings his sexual fantasy to life. Up until the last ten minutes of the film -the point where Jack escapes from the storage closet until the end- all the evidence fairly clearly points to a story about a man sinking into insanity, and his psychic son who gets increasingly disturbing flashes of his father's deteriorating psyche. ---'haven't the belly for it'--- The ending is the major flaw of the film. When Jack escapes from the storage closet, however, this internal logic of the film is shattered, and the ending is an unsatisfying bait-and-switch as a result. Although the clear implication of the film is that the 'ghost' Delbert Grady frees Jack from his makeshift prison once he has satisfied himself that Jack is serious in his intention to murder his family, it can be argued that since we never see this occur, Jack may have freed himself and hallucinated aid from his imagined benefactor. Consider that in the scene where Wendy drags Jack into the closet, she has considerable difficulty with the lock mechanism on the door. So much screen time (twenty full seconds) is expended showing how little Wendy understands how the lock works, its easy to accept that she may not have locked it properly after dragging Jack inside, resulting in an easy escape for him. Whether or not Jack is freed by 'ghosts', thus betraying the film's internal logic, the rest of the ending certainly does. While Danny continues to abide by the rules of his ability -his 'REDRUM' ranting is still clearly just a reporting of his father's mental state, which by this point has him lugging an axe around with every intention of liquidating his family- Wendy suddenly becomes sensitive enough to witness the 'ghosts' of the Overlook herself, and not simply echoes of her husband's thoughts, but inexplicable images of the Hotel's past. The succession of quick cuts which follow (while Jack is downstairs committing his only successful murder, of the poor defenseless Halloran) is the great disappointment of the film. Instead of the visceral journey of one man into insanity, we suddenly have a fairly conventional horror movie, complete with cobwebs, skeletons, and sudden apparitions. The sudden shift makes no sense, and destroys the internal logic of the film almost completely, leaving the viewer confused. Were there actually ghosts? Was Jack mad, or possessed, or both? Did Wendy possess the Shine too? If so, why hasn't she been picking up on the visions, on the hotel's evil, on Jack's madness? The final chase through the hedge maze is masterfully done, and salvages the entertainment value of the film. The final shot, of Jack somehow appearing in a photo from 1921, of a party occurring within the Overlook, is chilling and frightening and interesting, but also betrays the logic which had been established, indicating that the Overlook was, indeed, infused with supernatural forces, and that Jack, indeed, got his wish to stay there forever. The inconsistency between the last few minutes of the film and the balance are too jarring, however, and take away from the ultimate power of the narrative. Stanley Kubrick was a famously controlling filmmaker, who didn't put anything up on the screen he didn't intend to, so it's easy to assume any number of explanations for this perceived inconsistency. Since I'm tired of writing, I'll just assume he was very, very tired, and finished his movies like I finish my articles - simply by ceasing to work on them, and cobbling together end ending, sort of like....this. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** GETTING PIGGY WITH IT By Jeff Somers ======================================== One thing I know, piggies, is that you people will wear anything. My own fashion sense hasn't changed much since I was 13 years old, which I take as a sign from god that I'm doing something right. The rest of you, however, have been making some seriously bad clothing choices of late. While I have an endless amount of stuff to point to as evidence of your sad inability to dress yourselves properly (baggy pants, etc), the main reason I question your collective sanity is your tendency to wear advertising on your clothing for no compensation whatsoever. I guess it all started with the designer jean craze of the seventies and eighties, this desire to wear the logo of the company on your body. Certainly the root of this desire is greed, of a sort, basic materialism. People like to wear name brands because it announces to the world that they can afford to do so. Only a fat and complacent society could support such a frivolous attitude towards one of the basic needs of the human animal: clothing, which is right up there with shelter and moonshine on the 'must have' primitive imperatives list. You certainly don't worry about whose design you're wearing when simply clothing yourself against the elements is a problem, which probably explains why the homeless and extremely impoverished don't wear designer clothes, although a great many poor people display lots of can-do American ingenuity by stealing as much of the stuff as humanly possible. We're greedy, all of us, and that always comes out in different ways. One of those ways is the need to display our riches. We usually aren't happy to just enjoy wealth, we have to rub it into everyone around us. Wearing clothing which leaves no doubt as to how much money you paid for it is one way of showing it all off. We here at The Inner Swine don't give a rat's ass about that, really; you can grind your economic boot into your neighbor's throat any time you like and we'll just choke on half-chewed cheetohs laughing at the sight. No, what bothers us, friends, is the fact that for all your greed, your good old-fashioned acquisitive tunnel-vision, you're giving away prime-time advertising real estate without so much as a complaint!! People, people, people -you put on your fucking Tommy Hilfiger jacket, and Tommy Boy is getting a walking billboard. We live in an age where everything up to and including toilet paper is considered fertile advertising space, and you're giving it away. I mean, christ. Grab an oar and start pulling your weight, pigs. I say, if Tommy Boy wants you to wear his fucking name on your back, you should get something out of it -a discount, let's say, off the more expensive non-labeled clothing. Or a rebate in the form of a rental fee. Or, hell, something. As it is right now you're giving it away like a high school chick at a frat party and it's giving the rest of us a bad name. And you know what this makes you, don't it? That's right. A Corporate Stooge. The official Inner Swine position on Corporate Stooges is: Corporate Stooges, as a general policy, deserve to be beaten about the head until unconscious and then sold into Taiwanese slavery. However, if a Stooge is your role in life, why not be our stooge? The Inner Swine would love you to advertise us around the country for free all the time. Towards this end, we're going to be unveiling a new TIS clothing line this summer: ---Casual Wear For Dimwitted Slackers--- You'll be the envy of all the other schmuck-cap wearing, fashion-conscious mental midgets when you're sporting our casual duds, designed with these special features: - The words "The Inner Swine" appearing a minimum of 173 times on all garments. - Lots of cool stitchings and metal studs and stuff - Deep deep pockets so you can hide all your gear. ---SportsWear for Spoiled Trustifarians--- Got too much money and time on your hands while you sit around and get high in your spacious rent-controlled Manhattan apartment? Wear our ordering information on your chest! You'll be the height of cool nihilism when channel-surfing in clothes that offer these amazing features: - Sewed in third-world sweatshops by tubercular children being paid seven cents a day, minus room and board, a must for any rich idiot. - The words "The Inner Swine" appearing a minimum of 5,625 times on all garments (inside and outside) - All clothes made large enough for a small family of dwarves to live in with minor crowding issues, so you'll have that "cool roomy" look so important to you dummies. ---Hottie Wear--- Are you a fantastically hot woman who likes wearing one-size-too-small t-shirts emblazoned with eye-drawing designs? Why not whore your body for The Inner Swine? Our Hottie Wear is chock full of amazing details, like: - Your belly-button guaranteed exposed or your money back - The words "The Inner Swine" guaranteed a maximum of three times, most prominently on the breastal area. - No longer requiring registration with full address and phone number for purchase. Well there you have it! Check out our e-commerce site to purchase our clothing line, all credit cards accepted, as well as: cash, beads, interesting stones, chattel, livestock, and unwanted daughters. Get Piggy now! ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** AMERICAN WEDDING CONFIDENTIAL #8 GABBA GABBA HEY: ONE OF US By Jeff Somers ======================================== It's always vaguely troubling when one of my intimates decides to chuck the glories and wonders of single life and get hitched. Not only is there a subtle hint that single life isn't as glorious and wonderful as I'd like to believe, but there is also the strong possibility that the wedding ceremony will be closely followed by children, tupperware parties, and stony silence when I next call them at 3AM drunkenly demanding that they come out and get pancakes with me. In short, when a member of The Inner Swine Inner Circle announces plans to get married, I smile, congratulate them, excuse myself and spend an hour in the bathroom weeping and beating my head against the wall, crying "Why!? WHY?!" Don't get me wrong; I'm not anti-relationship. I'm anti-marriage. I could go on and on about why I think its an outdated convention, but I'll spare you, gentle reader. Just accept it as part of the TIS Canon and let's move on, shall we? SO, when Cassie [REDACTED], TIS Publisher and dues-paying member of TISIC for the past six years announced she was getting married, I spent my hour in the bathroom moaning and then did the only sensible thing one can do: I went out and bought a new suit to wear to the wedding, because the number one rule of being Jeff Somers, Superstar is that you must always look incredible. My whole reputation is based on looking disco-hot all the time, you know. Of course, I did go out and purchase this suit by myself. You don't get to look disco-hot when you're cursed with my fashion sense; you have to get chicks to shop for you. Luckily, women in general are always happy to shop for men - it's genetically programmed into them, you see- and TIS Legal Counsel The Duchess was more than happy to shop specifically for me. We went to the mall, and I don't remember anything in-between parking the car and waking up in the trunk along with several bags from Macy's about three hours later. The Duchess' ways are mysterious ways, but she had procured for me the specified disco-hot suit, so all was well. The wedding itself was being held in Staten Island, which is a vague place filled with fear and foreboding, or it was all of us who were filled with fear and foreboding and Staten Island is just a borough of New York. In any event, the intrepid members of TISIC had rented a pair of rooms so we'd have someplace to pass out later, and the bride and groom had thoughtfully rented a bus to take guests from the hotel to the church to the reception and back to the hotel. We carefully sized up the pros and cons of starting the alcohol consumption right there at the hotel, but eventually decided (after some harsh words and implied violence) that Satan was already working through us far too easily, and being sober in church was the least we owed Cassie, who had already made several verbal threats concerning our behavior at her wedding. The ceremony is lost to the mists of time, of course; my instinctual defense mechanisms cause me to pass out cold the moment I enter any type of holy ground. Misty Quinn and The Duchess propped me gently against one of the confessionals, or so I'm told, keeping me well out of harm's way, except for a minor speaking-in-tongues incident and one attempted exorcism, prevented by Security Chief Ken West, apparently by using a handy crucifix as a club and shouting "The Power of Christ Compells You!" I came to on the bus as we arrived at the reception hall; mysteriously, I had a beer in one hand already and someone had removed my undergarments. We descended on the cocktail hour as a well-oiled machine, spreading out to cover all the wet bars and commandeering a large table in the back, where I sat with the Uniquitous Tim Reynolds and critiqued the fashion sense of our fellow invitees, who were not at all disco-hot. Two drinks later and we were called into the dining room, where we descended upon the place like a well-oiled machine, spreading out to cover the wet bars. Buckets of beer bottles were procured, shots were ordered up, and by the time the reception ended several transformations had taken place: 1. Karen Accavallo had relinquished her title as "Dancing Queen". Some years ago I attended a wedding as Karen's 'date', which inspired the original American Wedding Confidential. In that watershed TIS article, I dubbed her the Dancing Queen because, after several rum-and-cokes served up in large plastic cups, Karen twisted the night away, often regardless of my presence on the dancefloor with her. This evening, however, the lovely and formidable The Duchess took the title away from Karen after she took me to the dance floor several times, often using brutal force. Fearing for my safety, I danced as I have never danced before. Oh, the horror. 2. TISIC had changed from "The Odd-Looking Strangers at Table 6" to "Cassie's Frightening Friends Who Set That Mutha Off". Indeed, despite Cassie's desperate attempts to distance herself from us all evening, by the time we were forcibly removed from the reception hall (Jeof Vita having been pried away from the beer taps in an embarrassing episode of weeping and begging) everyone in the place knew who we were and rightly feared us, mostly due to the many times Misty Quinn grabbed the microphone from the DJ to introduce us and sing torch songs in a low, smoky voice. By the time the priest took off his collar and began whipping the Best Man mercilessly with it[1], we were all at the point where that didn't bother us at all. 3. Several Gallons of Alcohol Had Become Several Terrific Hangovers. From Jeof Vita's first screams of "The Sun! It Burns Us!" to the last-minute search of the hotel for a missing Ken West (found sobbing softly in a linen closet on the fifth floor, an empty bottle of schnapps clutched to his chest), the morning-after was not a pretty sight at all. And so TISIC gathered to send one of its own off into the frightening world of adult relationships. Cassie may not ever speak to us again, but that's okay. We've got dirt on her to last a lifetime. Congrats to Cassie and Mex [REDACTED], who got married in spite of my best advice. [1] THIS REALLY HAPPENED. I SWEAR. ======================================== *** INTERVIEW *** The Inner Swine Interviews #8 A Condition of Decay or Partial Ruin TEN QUESTIONS WITH CASSIE [REDACTED] ======================================== 1. How is it possible that you haven't fired Jeff Somers yet? He's obviously incompetent. Oh believe you me, I've tried. Those bleeding hearts in human resources keep thwarting me. They keep saying I need "documentation". It's coming. That's all I'll say. But he should be on guard. 2. You're the sole survivor of a plane that crashes on a deserted island, along with your cats Red and Sox, and Misty Quinn and Jeof Vita's cat Snuffy. There is no food or hope for rescue on the island. Which cat do you eat first, and why? None. I train the 3 cats to be a first rate commando team and threaten them with the barbecue pit if any of them fail me. Then I send the three of them out to search for bugs and edible plant life. The 4 of us eat our fill of beetle larvae and rare foliage and live a rather happy existence until….Wait a minute, why would I be traveling with Jeff and Misty's cat? 3. Can you explain Moore's Law of Transistor Doubling? We assume you can, since you're genetically a Moore. Please show your work. It's when you have one transistor radio and get another one as a gift. You now have double the number of transistors you had before. Also works if you buy the second transistor yourself. 4. In your opinion, is the statement "Gosh, you look tired" an insult or a simple observation?? Of course it's an insult. And I'm not sure why we're even having this discussion, but, here's my reasoning. First of all, let's look at the definition of the word "tired," shall we? And while doing so, let's try and use each of the associated words in a sentence you might say to your lovely girlfriend, something like "Gee, honey, you look real purdy tonight." MAIN ENTRY: TIRED. FUNCTION: ADJECTIVE. DATE: 15TH CENTURY. 1. DRAINED OF STRENGTH AND ENERGY : FATIGUED OFTEN TO THE POINT OF EXHAUSTION; 2. OBVIOUSLY WORN BY HARD USE : RUN-DOWN "Gee, honey, you look worn by hard use tonight." I've heard prostitutes described as "run-down." So let's make that: "Gee, honey, you look like a prostitute tonight." Yes, I'm sure your lovely girlfriend dreams of hearing you say that. Hmmmm… Let's continue…let's see the meaning of the word "run-down." MAIN ENTRY: RUN-DOWN. FUNCTION: ADJECTIVE. DATE: 1866. 1. WORN-OUT, EXHAUSTED; 2. COMPLETELY UNWOUND; 3. BEING IN POOR REPAIR : DILAPIDATED Dilapidated. A lovely word, so descriptive. "Being in poor repair." "Gee, honey, you look like an abandoned, condemned, rat-infested, rotting house tonight." How ever do you keep the women at bay? Moving on…. MAIN ENTRY: DI·LAP·I·DATE. FUNCTION: VERB. INFLECTED FORM(S): -DAT·ED; -DAT·ING. ETYMOLOGY: LATIN DILAPIDATUS, PAST PARTICIPLE OF DILAPIDARE TO SQUANDER, DESTROY, FROM DIS- + LAPIDARE TO PELT WITH STONES, FROM LAPID-, LAPIS STONE. DATE: CIRCA 1570. 1. TO BRING INTO A CONDITION OF DECAY OR PARTIAL RUIN Well, I think this one sums it up. When you tell me "You look tired," what you're really saying is "You look like you're decaying faster than a 70-year-old's teeth." Perhaps you've never seen the canines of an old geezer, because if you had, you would know why the phrase "you look tired" is by no means a mere observation 5. Quick! In fifty words or less defend your existence and its resultant consumption of vital resources. I'm here to make sure that the Editor doesn't goof off all day. I'm also here to keep my new husband happy. (And before you feminists start crawling all over me-my new husbands sole purpose in life is to keep me happy. So settle down Frances.) 6. Have you ever voluntarily acknowledged your association with The Inner Swine? No, no, no. I would like to finally go on record and completely disassociate myself with this organization. I've continuously sent letters to the head pig man to complain that he keeps using my name without my permission, but so far I've been ignored. The only reason I've even agreed to answer these questions is in the hope that it will prompt him to leave me alone. 7. If it isn't the leaving of Liverpool that's ailing you, what is it? My darling when I think of thee. Please. These are far too easy. 8. Because I don't think a nickname this interesting should ever die, I must ask you to explain how you came to be known as "The Fried Egg Queen." My legions of fans always ask about this one. It goes back many many years, to my carefree days as a young idealistic college student. Hoping to keep myself in beer money, I worked part time in the dining hall right next to my dormitory. My lovely roommate Danielle also worked there. We normally worked side-by-side on the hot line; dishing out slop to our fellow students. Come weekends, however, we'd abandon our normal positions and stake out our territory: Danielle to the omelette line and me to the fried egg line. As with most things, I was a quick study when it came to fried eggs. I could give them to you sunnyside up, over-easy, dead, any which way you wanted 'em. The legend of my prowess grew as time went on, and before long there was a line out the door and down the hill, all of 'em waiting to get their breakfast from the "Fried Egg Queen." The day I left to take up a less greasy job at the library, they shut the fried egg line down. I don't think it's been opened up since. 9. How come no one ever refers to Staten Island as simply and elegantly "The Island" the way they do with so many other islands? For the simple reason that Staten Island is unlike any other island you've ever visited. If you doubt me, hop on the Staten Island Ferry and come see for yourself. Might want to steer clear of the massive 'mountain' in the middle of the island, however. 10. What do you see in the following? My husband! As a disgustingly happy newlywed, I see my new wonderful husband in all things. I sing all day long and nothing bothers me. I see rainbows and unicorns too. La la la… ======================================== *** VIRTUALLY ARTLESS COMIC *** MR. MUTE! ======================================== HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU. NOW PLEASE SHUT UP. One of the more horrifying aspects of modern life is the persistent belief that every little thought in your pretty little heads is worthy of vocalization. Blah blah blah, all day long from you cretins. Talk shows and 'reality programming' have convinced all of you that your personal demons are worth my attention. Alcoholic? Victim of ? Then by all means feel free to tell me about it! Why shouldn't I want to hear all about it. I mean, you being fascinating, after all. The fact is, however, that such things are not interesting to anyone except you and people who, for their own inexplicable reasons, care about you. I don't care about you, so shut the fuck up already. This conviction that everyone is worthy of attention simply for drawing breath enough to speak is driving me to the edge. You know what's after the edge? Me, on national television, being led away from a crime scene by Federal agents, with the caption OBSCURE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH VICIOUS MURDER SPREE. The most annoying subject of your endless naval-gazing chatter, however, is your age. On the surface, this makes perfect sense; we're all mortal, we're all going to die, so an interest in monitoring our chances of continued existence is pretty natural and healthy. It all goes so horribly wrong the moment you all start bleating about it publicly, because that's where I start to realize how dumb you all really are. Sure, it's normal to have a healthy obsession with your rapidly-approaching death. What isn't natural is how many of you, apparently, aren't at all concerned with death, but are concerned with the various bullshit otherwise associated with age, most of which is just plain old complaining. In Mr. Mute's Future Paradise after I seize Total Executive Power later this year, complaining will be punished with tongue removal, you know. Ah, the Mr. Mute Paradise! I'll call it M&M Land for short. Shortly after I am carried into the White House on the broad backs of my lessers (you are going to vote, aren't you? M&M Goons will be visiting you in November to inspire you, have no fear). In this future world, we'll all be free from the moronic bleatings of our fellow primates. But I digress. Why all you annoying people are so obsessed with the cosmetic and largely meaningless ravages of age while being so nonchalantly unworried about the actual cessation of life itself is beyond me. You complain endlessly about your sagging butt, liver spots, hair loss, and other visual aspects of age. What about the moment when your heart just can't stand it any more and stops pumping blood, and you stop thinking shortly thereafter? A horrifying thought. Yet the lack of discussion about it leads me to believe that you all need a good spanking, and soon. The outward ravages of age don't mean anything except a little discomfort, which is why so many of you can't stop complaining about it. Who cares if you can't move so well any more, or if your sex appeal is down to about 5% on the Phyllis Diller scale? At least you're still alive, suckers. But since aging causes you to be less comfortable, the bleating begins. So much bleating, that I start to suspect that death can't come too soon for all of you. Death is what you should be worrying over, kids. Push through your slowing joints, scattered thoughts, and overactive bladders - they are merely bumps on the road. The Big D is what you ought to be talking about. Come to grips with your own mortality, or one of my first acts as your Dictator will be to force you to come to grips with it, get it? At least when you're running for your lives from Death Squads like in the classic film Logan's Run you won't have the breathe to complain about your expanding waistline or thinning hair. That's what I'm all about, kids. Shutting you all up, one at a time. And I'm getting better at it every day. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** FEAR OF A FREE WEEKEND TIME AS STATUS SYMBOL PART TWO By Jeff Somers ======================================== PIGS, I know where I'm going to die. No, really. It's an intersection on Route 27 in central New Jersey. The stoplight swings in the wind, a garage sits on one side, a bar on the other. Lots of traffic. And every time I've ever attempted to drive through it, something terrible has happened to me. My car has died, several times, inexplicably, there. I've gotten into accidents and near-tragedies there. My tire blew out, once. It's happened too often to be coincidence, and I know that if I keep going through that light, eventually I'll get killed. Now, knowing all this, it should be easy to stay out of that intersection. And, conceivably, if I stay out of that intersection, I could live forever, for if I'm meant to die there, staying out of it should frustrate the cosmos, right? The Reaper just sits there, checking his hourglass, waiting for me to drive up. Maybe he makes some calls, checking around for me, because I'm late. Eventually he leaves, pissed off. But, you see, I can already feel myself forgetting. As I write this, I know I haven't thought about the Death Intersection in months. After writing this, I'll probably forget again for a while. As decades pass it'll sink completely into my subconscious. And then, we all know what will happen. We've all seen TV, movies. We know what a hideous bitch-goddess Fate can be. What will happen is, I'll be driving some day in 2040, my mind on something else, when suddenly I'll realize that I vaguely recognize where I am. Something will tug at my mind. I'll frown as I get close to the stoplight (or the LED display that will replace stoplights in 2023) and sudden, horrible realization will wash over me like ice water just seconds before I am turned into a fine mist by a huge rig. My final thought will be something like, You fucking moron, you knew this was going to happen. So, I'm obsessed with time and my own existence, because thoughts like these make it impossible for me to forget that I am mortal, and that even as I write this, I'm dying, slowly, by degrees. Every beat of my heart wears out the muscle, every breath I take oxidizes more of my cellular structure. I can't forget. It makes me a sullen drunk, sometimes, and has cost me more party invites than I'll ever know (That, and my sullen insistence that one shower a week is 'enough'.) To me, this obsession is normal. We're all mortal, after all, why am I the only one who thinks it's normal and healthy to keep it in mind? I don't like to waste time. I don't like to stand in line, and when I do have to stand in line I bring something to do (a book to read, a notebook, something). I don't like to watch TV unless I'm doing something else too. And I'd rather stay home and write than do almost anything - I love the 'free weekend' wherein I have no other plans, except to wake up early, brew some coffee, and work on some stuff. Which is not to say that I don't waste my share of time -you have to, its healthy. I go out to movies, I drink too much with my friends. I sit and watch TV too much. But at least, I comfort myself, at least it bugs me. At least I try to get as much done as I can. What I never understand is how desperate everyone around me is to use up their time, to pass it in entertainment, or career, or what have you. Sure, not everyone is a writer or an artist, but do they really want to look back on their lives and see a steady stream of television, skiing, rented movies and video games? Recently, my girlfriend and I went to visit a dear friend of mine, and what struck me while we were there was the breathless pace of my friend's life. While working long hours at her job, and spending her evenings working out in the gym, watching movies, and going out to dinner and drinks with friends, she was also doing something just about every weekend. Skiing. Camping. Hiking. Driving here, driving there. While probably not true, it seemed that every single day of her life was taken up entertaining herself. There's nothing wrong with this, of course; my friend is living an exciting and interesting life, working hard, achieving the things that are important to her. I'm not writing this to say that her lifestyle is wrong, or in some way inferior. But I was struck by the complete contrast between that philosophy and mine, which can basically be boiled down to: I love a free weekend, with nothing to do except whatever I want to accomplish sitting at my desk, and almost everyone else in the world thinks I'm crazy, and seems to fear that kind of unstructured free time. The rest of the world, however, probably doesn't have that intersection on Route 27. I know I'm hurtling towards my own demise. Every moment I fail to create something is a moment I'll regret at the end. Sure, even if I work like a dog I'll still end up regretting 80% of my life as wasted time. It could be so much worse, though. I am exhausted just by talking to people, these days. Never the most dynamic of men, I'm finding my stay-at-home ethic to be more and more at odds with the rest of you fuckers. As I age into a thick jelly, the rest of you are, apparently, on speed -people around me seem to have a visceral need to be busy, all the time, every day, filling their cluttered lives with relentless careerism, frantic recreation, and apparent fear of free time. Many of my friends and acquaintances plan so much so far in advance it's disconcerting, almost as if they were afraid of having nothing to do. Pigs, I believe that having 'nothing to do' is the best thing you can aspire to, and that people who resist it do so because valuing unstructured time requires intelligence, which most people don't have. So many people around me seem to have no interests outside of their jobs and what's handed to them by the Entertainment Industry. If an unplanned Saturday meant twelve hours of television for me, you can bet your ass I'd be desperate to make plans too. Consider how people spend their time these days: each week offers us 168 hours of existence. About 56 can be assumed to be spent sleeping, more or less, leaving us 112. Factoring in commute, we wage slaves spend at least 50 hours a week at a full-time job, leaving 62. Many deranged individuals work out at gyms; let's say 10 hours, giving us 52. Factor in 21 meals at an average of 45 minutes each (your mileage may vary) and you're left with 36 hours, or an average of 5 a day -but of course most of those hours are during the weekends. After a week spent dashing around madly, you'd think people would want to relax, would crave 'nothing to do', yet it seems to me that so many people fear the stigma. Why is this? I find myself thinking again of my theory of Time as a new status symbol: specifically, the lack of it as proof that we're successful human beings. WE'RE no longer citizens, in case you hadn't noticed, we're consumers. Have been for quite some time. The engine which runs our world is half of us make stuff or provide service, the other half consume each. We overlap and move between each side throughout our lives -after all, someone employed making cars goes out and purchases products or hires services. Since our consuming drives the world, we're encouraged to do so. This much is obvious. The encouragement has gotten more and more strident as time moves on: advertising is invading every aspect of our lives, eating away at the landscape and any flat surface they can get their hands on, and people are trained as consumers at younger and younger ages, so that now children make up one of the largest blocs of consumers in this country. When I was twelve years old, money was mysterious and I had to work my parents for months before getting anything that cost more than two bucks. Today, you have hordes of kids twelve years old and younger flooding record stores to buy albums on their debut day. As a population, we're pushed to consume as much as we can, to keep things moving. It isn't hard to see that consuming has become a status-symbol. Right behind it, however, is Time - because, in order to consume, we have to spend our time. The less time you have, the more your life is packed with Brave New World-type distractions, the more successful you must be. So, people eagerly work seventy-hour weeks. They brag about it. Me, I'd be depressed as hell if I was devoting that much of my life (considering there're 168 hours in a week, working 70 of them means you're devoting 40% of your life to your job) to a corporation, but people actually brag about it, working into every conversation how much they have to work. People also book their free time like demons: lunches, dinners, movies, concerts, parties and the like during the week, and trips and such during the weekend. It seems like everyone I know is always running around like crazy, and they expect me to do the same. I'm asked, what are you doing this weekend, and when I respond that I intend to stay home and get some work done, they look at me like I'm insane. I once had a conversation with a dear friend of mine concerning several Deep Things all at once: breeding, death, and legacy. I, of course, am of the stark opinion that there is no afterlife, so you'd better get done now whatever it is you think worth doing, and that if you don't leave a big mark on the world no one will know you even existed 100 years from now. Oh, and I refuse to breed, ho ho ho. My dear friend argued that her legacy was going to be her family, that even if her memory faded, her children would carry parts of her with them, and pass them on to their children, and so on, so that her great-great-great descendants would have some small aspect of her personality imprinted upon them. It was a compelling argument I eventually rejected for myself, but a legitimate one anyway. I certainly don't know everything, and I might work like a dog all my life and end up forgotten anyway. My friend has her work and she works hard at it: her career, her family. This is good work. The friend I visited has similar goals she's trying hard to achieve, and the recreational things she does on the weekends is more about experiencing things than simply passing time, and that's good work too. It just isn't my work, and I'll never understand, which makes us all equal. You've got to pick your horse and ride it to the end, though. If you spend too much time trying to figure it all out, you'll be long dead before you get started. If there's no afterlife, if the world's just a lucky spark in the vastness of space and eventually the human race will be snuffed out, leaving no trace -well, then nothing we do matters, and I might as well have relaxed a bit more and drank a bit more. As if that were possible. ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** THE SUBLIME LYRICS OF AC/DC By Jeff Somers ======================================== Where does a young man learn to woo the women of his dreams? The skills of romance aren't easy to come by, after all, and men who are successful at the game of amor tend to guard their secrets jealously. Each succeeding generation of randy studs has to come by the ancient wooing knowledge their own way. For many of us, we learned it all from a little rock and roll band from Australia called AC/DC. At first examination, AC/DC seems like a pretty typical hard-rock band from whose heyday was in 1980: they're ugly brutes who are so sodden with booze and drugs they can barely speak coherently, they learned three guitar chords early and quit while they were ahead, and they rely on their impenetrable Aussie accents to obscure their more seedy sentiments. Upon a closer look, however, AC/DC is revealed as a bastion of practical advice on how to get with the ladies, or at least they seemed so when I was thirteen years old. Imagine the doors of knowledge thrown wide when I first heard these classic lyrics from Let Me Put My Love Into You, a cut off of AC/DC's classic (classic!) 1980 album, Back in Black: "Let me put my love into you, babe Let me put my love on the line Let me put my love into you, babe Let me cut your cake with my knife." While I didn't know it at the time, the sheer it-goes-to-eleven Spinal Tapism of those lyrics is glorious in its uncomplicated view of male-female interactions. Much can be learned from this song, I knew from first listen. Eagerly, I plumbed the depth of the AC/DC catalog (weathering even their regrettable 1983 effort Flick of the Switch, which is basically a demo tape of the band rehearsing half crocked), seeking knowledge. From their drunkenly slurred songs, I learned all about the many aspects of romance. Even the simple, concise titles of their songs hint at the breadth and scope of knowledge these Aussie lads offer us. While on occasion they have abandoned their good, simple credo (which can only be "everything that can be said with two words can be boiled to 'Oy'") and come up with some word-heavy titles (the clunker 'It's a Long Way to the Top If You Wanna Rock and Roll' comes to mind), for the most part you can glean just how much AC/DC has to teach us just from their spare, poetic titles. Need to know how to talk to chicks? Try Playing with Girls.[1] Wondering how much alcohol is too much? Try Have a Drink on Me. Need some tips on handling rejection? Shot Down in Flames is here to help. Awash in moral doubts? Some Sin for Nothin' is a good primer on good and evil. Feel the need for some historical perspective? Let There Be Rock spells it out for you. In romance, the lads have prepared a litany of 3-and-a-half minute courses for you: Girls Got Rhythm, Sink the Pink, Touch Too Much, Shook Me All Night Long, and so many others. How can you not learn from the band which wrote these immortal lyrics (from The Jack): "She gave me the queen she gave me the king she was wheeling and dealing just doing her thing she was holding a pair but I had to try her deuce was wild but my ace was high but how was I to know that she'd been dealt with before said she'd never had the full house but I should have known she's got the Jack" In the face of such genius, even I must bow. It's hard to conceive how the world functioned before the early 1970s, when AC/DC showed up to teach us the way. Having based my life on their teachings, I have built an empire on drunkenly slurred innuendo, long greasy hair, and an explosive rhythm section. No one can understand a thing I say, but I look pretty good in tight jeans, if I do say so myself, so it all works out in the end. Oy! ----- [1]This classic marriage of a backbeat and epic poetry contains this achingly beautiful stanza: "I like tall girls and I'll take 'em small / I want 'em all up front I like 'em all / I wanna see 'em strut their stuff / And lose their social grace / You play your cards right and you'll deal yourself an ace / That's where you'll see me standing proud / Playing with girls gonna get you hot / Playing with guns gonna get you shot / Playing with fire gonna heat you up / Playing with me you're gonna get the lot." ======================================== *** COMMENTARY *** I WANT TO BE FROZEN WHEN I DIE SO I CAN BE TRIUMPHANTLY REVIVED WHEN THEY CURE DEATH By Jeff Somers ======================================== BROTHERS and sisters, not a one of us is going to live forever, or so they tell me. When I was a small lad in the wilds of Jersey, I was for a brief period of time convinced that Oxygen and Food were ugly addictions forced upon me by an evil Adult Conspiracy - that we were born able to survive in a vacuum, without food, hell, able to fly for all I knew (gravity perhaps an ugly plot too) but were conditioned to require air and sustenance. Many afternoons I submerged myself in our backyard pool, trying to go cold turkey on oxygen. Obviously, all I got for my efforts was trouble with my short-term memory and low-level chemical burn from the chlorine. But even then I was seeking to throw off the chains of mortality. There must be more to this life, I was sure. Now I'm not so sure. My goals have shifted over the last 20 years: back then, I wanted to write the Great American Novel and become a Neurosurgeon on the side. Today, I have only one goal left: to be buried in a coffin the size of a piano crate. To force the authorities to spend thousands of dollars to remove a wall of my house and have a team of workers with a crane remove my bloated, softly round carcass from its final bedridden prison and place me in a custom-made coffin big enough for four normal men. Work towards this goal continues steadily. I eat every chance I get, and I haven't met the salted or cheese-influenced food I didn't like. I drink lots, and haven't broken a sweat in years. By all calculations I'm already 5 years ahead of weight-gain schedule. Once I'm dead, though, I think I want to be frozen. There are companies out there which will take your body directly after death (or, preferably, some few moments prior to death, but that kind of timing is tough to get right) and insta-freeze you inside foil wrapping (not unlike the concept of Buck Rogers in the 21st Century TV show from the 70s) so that no hint of decay will touch your physical remains. Why would anyone do this? Well, the theory is that when medical science advances to a point where your cause of death has been cured, and has advanced to the point where they can successfully revive frozen dead people, well then they'll thaw me out, reconstruct my blown-out cardiovascular system, and re-insert me into the Matrix. I figure it this way: once I'm dead, I'm dead; it really won't matter much whether I get burned into ashes or left for worms, or fed to wild animals in big fat-marbled chunks - or frozen. So why not freeze? Hey, if it doesn't work out, I'll still be dead. But imagine the scene if it turns out to be feasible and everyone I know gets frozen moments after their overdoses...except me: Jeof Vita: Oh, man, I'm stiff as a board. Who knew it would only take them 500 years to cure my Brain Cloud? Hey, where's Jeff Somers? I just got synthetic muscles and Wolverine-claws implanted, I want to kick his ass. Ken West: Somers? He chickened out at the last minute and had himself set adrift on a burning rowboat on the Hudson river. Jeof Vita: Asshole. Ken West: Hey, this Soylent Green is pretty good. Jeof Vita: That isn't Soylent Green....I couldn't find the bathroom. Ken West: Aaaaahhhh-oooooogaaaaa! Of course, when you're frozen you'd better set up one kick-ass retirement fund, because I don't think they'll be thawing out just anybody in the future. I figure it'll be something like this: Future Doctor #1: Should we unfreeze this Somers behemoth or this guy...chart says his name is "Hefner"? Future Doctor #2: Somers now owes us thirty-six-thousand-trillion dollars. We can't get his money without a fresh signature. Future Doctor #1: Does he have any money? Future Doctor #2: No. We X-Rayed Hefner, though, and he's got a fifty hidden in his slippers. Future Doctor #1: Let's donate Somers to Soylent Green of Mexico Inc. and thaw out Hefner. They're paying $5,000 a pound for Caucasians these days. Future Doctor #2: Look at the size of him! WE'RE RICH! It's always good to have a plan, and my plan is to throw my life away on booze, porno videos, and this magazine, and then replace the traditional deathbed appeal to God with a quick flash-freezing procedure coupled with a 10% chance that there wouldn't be too much spoilage before they find a way to perform total internal-organ transplants. I advise all of my readers to follow my lead: you too can be frozen and revived. ======================================== *** FICTION *** TIME'S THUMB By Jeff Somers ======================================== "Time's Thumb hovering over my head, always ready to rub me out yet it never does...and I continue to drag myself along rubbing off the soles of my shoes as I go, my only legacy." -- M. Remos ---MAY--- "Hey, Dubs, you okay, man?" Marvin. Fucking Marvin just molecules near fucking don't like Marvin. "I'm fine." Resume staring at hands. "What do you think happened to him?" I sigh, deep breath, cleansing breath, trying to exhale the knot in my stomach, the sympathetic symptom because I know oh I know it ought to be me, meant to. Eyes up, rub face, try to look normal. Stained white walls, cracked plastic chairs, vending machines, people staring around like kicked dogs and Marvin Marvin Marvin. "I don't know," I force it out. Look normal, I think. No one can see it, no one knows. "I took a nap, I came out, and Don was on the floor, puke everywhere. I couldn't wake him. Has he been on anything?" Liar. I'm a fucking christ of all people why Marvin? He shakes his head. "Man, how much longer are they gonna be?" Cracked plastic vending machines women in white coats with clipboards and that synthetic chemical smell. People bleeding on themselves hating we're not hating us because we're not hurt. Head back down. I can't handle normal. I'm not normal. I'm a Dublen. We Dublens, we die. What did I do what did I do what did I do this time? "He was fine this morning, man," shut up Marvin shut up shutup shutup, "what could have happened to him?" Shake head, look normal, "I don't know." Liar. ---OCTOBER--- I was in the shadows, sitting in the big overstuffed chair that Dad used to favor, his Throne, none of us had ever been allowed to sit in it. Even when Dad was away, we would be chased, yelled at, abused for daring to mock its sanctity. Even after Dad Went Away, we were yelled at. He was never going to sit in it again, but we weren't allowed in it. Over the years though it had been moved out of the way; since none of us were allowed to sit in it, the ugly green chair was just in the way. The rest of the room was hidden, too, except right near the window, where moonlight gave the old rollup desk a sickly existence, and the doorway connecting the living room with the kitchen, where the flourescent light fought its way into the darkness, quickly weakening until it faded away completely three feet into the gloom, revealing little more than pale wooden floor, the bare scum of the carpet's edge. Nance was in the kitchen, she was just a shadow moving here and there. I could tell from her shadow she was smoking, could smell the cigarette. I imagined what Mom would have done to her, years ago, if she found her smoking. I imagined Mom's ghost materializing out of the close, darkened air of the room, disciplining me and Nance one more time. I waited. I wanted to surprise her. There might be a misunderstanding. ---NOVEMBER--- Greg Pikler told Bennie that he was going to jump his ass after school, somewhere between school and our house, where Bennie might never expect, he'd jump out and pound him. This because Bennie had studiously curved his arm around his Grammar test in class, forcing Greg to crane his neck very obviously in order to cheat, and had been caught. He'd gotten a zero on the test, and been sent to the Principal's office. At recess he'd told Bennie to watch his six, which none of us knew what it meant until Greg explained that his older brother had told him it meant watch your back. This with an air of pride, of superiority. Instantly we were all using the phrase as if it had been part of our vocabulary for years, only newly remembered. Bennie begged me for help, trembling with fear. Greg Pikler had always ignored Bennie before, although Bennie was such an easy target in so many ways. Plump, slow, smart, glasses, still wearing button-down shirts and dress pants to school as if he was still nine. Still letting Mom dress him. Somehow, Bennie had escaped Greg's ire all last year and so far this semester. Bennie quivering literally like gelatin, his pillow body softly terrified. I hated Bennie when he got scared. I was afraid of Greg too, but no one bothered me because I was good at kickball and could run faster than almost anyone. I was exempt. I wasn't sure what all the rules were, but Greg and his cronies never bothered me. But I knew that if I stood up for Bennie I would be exposed, and then I'd be in the same mess. Bennie, don't be such a faggot. Stand up for yourself. Bennie quivered. He was red-faced, near tears. Harry, he begged, just walk home with me. Pikler won't do anything if you're there. Please. I sneered at him. I'll tell Dad you're such a fag, Bennie. But I agreed to walk home with him. I was a year older, in sixth grade. I knew that with such advanced age came great responsibility. That's what Dad said. He always said, you'll understand when you're older, Harrison. You'll find out: with age comes responsibility. Enjoy your youth while you can. It sneaks up on you. This while he sat in his chair, drinking his highballs. What he and Mom called it, a highball. Smelled like lime. Tasted awful, as I'd discovered. Still, Bennie was terrified. We agreed to meet right outside the main entrance to the school. We had to get Nancy then, toddling out of the afternoon kindergarten session, usually covered in finger paints and clutching another priceless work of gibberish which Mom would hang on the fridge, studying it for some sign that Nancy wasn't congenitally brain-damaged. I hadn't found any yet. All she did was follow me around and fall on her ass and burst into tears, far as I could tell. But we had to get her after school. If we came home without Nancy, Mom would make us pay for a new baby sister. This out of our allowance. I asked Dad, secretly, how much that would cost, thinking maybe we could get one that didn't toddle around and cry so much, one that drew pictures that looked like something. But Dad had replied that I'd likely be his age before I saved up enough for a new sister. So we were stuck with Nance, who often smelled like sour milk. Bennie was afraid that in the fifteen seconds it would take him to huff and puff his fat butt from the door where the fifth graders would be pushed out of the building to the central main entrance, Pikler and his goons would fall upon him and attack. From the windows, I guess he imagined. Like vultures. All afternoon, I pictured him steadily crapping his tan dress pants that Mom put out for him, waiting for him to complain like I had, to demand that he choose his own clothes for school. I tried to tell him he wouldn't get so much picking on if he just stopped dressing like a geek, but he never seemed to hear me. I pictured him white and sweating, feeling Pikler's eyes on him even thought Pikler was in Mrs. Statler's class for the sixth graders who were still reading at a fifth grade level. Mom said they were "kids who needed some extra attention". Dad, privately, between us men, told me they were "dummies". I believed Dad. Pikler could barely read his own name. I remember the first day of school, a big bunch of parents came to protest that their kids didn't belong in Mrs. Statler's class. Getting put into Statler's class was a well-known sign of shame, and no kid wanted to read her name when their assignments came in the mail. I pictured these families, weeping and clutching each other, stunned at the announcement that their kid was a dummy, and would spend the year re-reading their fifth-grade books until they got them right. Rumor had it there were kids in Statler's class that were almost Dad's age, still trying. They snuck them in from a secret entrance, and they wore disguises. The parents, I remember, held their kids out of class and brought them into the principal's office, and there was a lot of yelling. But their kids were still in Statler's class. The principal didn't have to listen to them. Bennie wouldn't end up in Statler's class. He was already reading the seventh-grade books, and was allowed to go to the school library three times a week just to sit and read. This while the rest of his class wrote out their spelling words fifty times. Bennie loved the library. But he didn't see how much the kids hated him because he didn't have to write out his spelling words and still won every spelling bee. Bennie, spell phenomenal. Bennie, spell rebellious. Spell lunar. He always got them right. When the class would be split up into teams for the spelling bee, the kids would fight over which side got Bennie. But they still hated him for it. After school I made my way to the main entrance, taking my time, trying to be cool about it. Bad enough I was going to be placed squarely in Pikler's sites, at least I could be cool about it. I waited for Bennie and he came running, huffing and puffing, his bookbag that was twice his size bouncing up and down on his back. Bennie wanted to get going right away, because he thought his class got out before Statler's and therefore we might have a head start on Pikler. But we had to wait for Nance. So we stood there for a while, watching all the other kids stream out of the school, laughing and shouting and already picking teams for basketball. I was going over Theo Maggi's house later to play video games. Bennie watched with dread, hoping he wouldn't see Pikler, but compelled to seek him out. Finally, Nancy was pushed out along with a boatload of other tiny people. Nancy in her little yellow dress and white tights and bright, shined black shoes. She came running over, screaming our names, holding up yet another masterpiece. Harry, Harry! Bennie! she yelled, waving a piece of white paper as big as she was, covered in splotches of color. Look at what I made for Mommy! And then, right on schedule, she spontaneously loses all of her ability to stay upright and goes down hard, on her knees. She looks up and starts to cry, her tights torn, and I can see a little blood where's she's skinned herself. I never fell as much as Nancy when I was a kid. No one falls as much as her. She can't stay up on her little feet for more than a minute. I think that, as much as she falls over, she'd be used to it. But she always cries. Come on, Ninnie, I say. It's not so bad. Come on, we gotta go. Bennie is dancing around, desperate to get out of the courtyard. It's too open, and he's terrified we'll stand here until everyone else is gone and we'll be sitting ducks. Nance is wailing, still on her knees, and I have to go and pick her up, bookbag and all, and carry her. She smells like clay today. She is still clutching her picture in one small hand. She's crying at top volume, her day has been ruined, gone from a fantastic day of painting her masterpiece to the worst day of her life, all in three seconds. Come on, Ninnie, Mom'll fix you up. Don't call me that! Nancy screeches, getting snot all over me. My little sister is always damp, too. All-over body damp, and it's another thing I could do without. I heft her little body, make sure Bennie hasn't melted into the ground, and start walking towards the exit. Nancy continues to wail, but she's got a death-grip on her painting. I imagine if she let it blow away at this point she'd commit suicide, which is when you're so sad you just die, right there. They can't let you into Heaven if you die like that, but Dad always says there's no Heaven late at night after a few highballs, and Mom gets mad at him, which leads me to believe that it's true. I don't want to have to bring Nancy home dead and limp and hand her over to Mom solemnly and explain how she suicided, so I bounce her a little in my arm, which is getting tired. Come on, Nance, I say. I'll get you an ice at Herman's on the way home, okay? She sobers up enough to snuffle back a gob of yellow snot and ask, what flavor? Any one you want. This cheers her, this range of choices. She starts calculating how many of the flavors she's had. Blue, once, and didn't like it. Red, all the time, her favorite. Green, too, her favorite. Purple is good too, but only in some of her moods. She's never had a yellow one, she confesses heavily, or a white one. She's afraid the white one is just plain old ice. And Kristen Kelly who sits next to her in class and who is her best friend ever since they swapped lunches and they each got their favorite lunch, somehow, in some weird twist of lunch magic, once told her in a heated whisper that the yellow ices are pee-pee. So Nance won't ever have a white ice or a yellow ice. She'd only have a blue one if it was the only other kind there. Bennie complains. He doesn't want to stop in at Herman's. He's afraid that Pikler will find us there. We'd be trapped. There's no choice though; Nance has calmed enough to let me put her down, one tiny hand still clutching her picture, one holding onto my own as we walk. Bennie huffs to keep up with us, his eyes everywhere. Bennie's fat. I'd never really realized it before. Somehow in the last year or so he's expanded. I've gotten skinny. Bennie's gotten fat. I tell him we're just going to be in Herman's for a minute, just to get Nance an ice. I figure if Pikler's looking for Bennie the chances are equal he'll find him no matter where we go. Herman's store windows are crowded with ancient toys and boxes of things faded from the sun, things no one would ever buy. The stuff in the windows keeps the sun out. It's always dark and cool in Herman's. It's Herman's because that's what the sign says outside. But the man who is always behind the counter is named Mishak. All of us call him Mish, because that's what he tells us to call him. He always smiles at us. Legend has it he sometimes gives away candy and sodas, if you happen to be in the store at the right time. I wonder who Herman is. Mish is busy, kids are moving through the store in a constant rush. Buying gum. Buying baseball cards. Buying sodas. Buying rubber balls for stickball later. I bring Nance to the humming cooler, next to the mysterious newspapers Mom and Dad sometimes read, I've never read one. Inside are all sorts of things: ice cream, ices, peas and corn. Who would eat an ice that tasted like peas? Nance makes me lift her up so she can see her choices, even though she knows what they are. As if a new color might appear some day. Black, for licorice, maybe. Or a new shade of green, for apples. She silently studies the cooler, and then turns to me with happy eyes. Red, Harry, she says in a whisper. I set her down, open the cooler, and pull out a plastic tube filled with red ice. I hand it to Nance. It's almost as long as her arm. She looks at it in her hand and then points it back at me. You have to open it for me, Harry, she announces seriously, as if I forgot. Nance's teeth are always suspect, they seem to disappear and reappear randomly. We have to buy it first. No, Harry, now! I tug her after me to the counter. Mish makes a fuss over Nance. He calls her sweetheart. Dad calls Nance 'sweetheart' too. But it sounds different when Mish says it, because he has a strange way of speaking. It sounds like 'swithurt'. I wonder if anyone has ever told Mish that he sounds strange. I give Mish a dime for the ice, and Nance starts yelling that I have to open it for her. Outside the store, I tear the plastic open with my teeth and push the ice up and hand it to Nance, and she's quiet for a while. Now Bennie's wailing again, he wants me to carry Nance because she's slow. I tell him that she's probably faster than he is, because he's so fat. I have to keep Nance in front of me, because she's toddling along as usual and I'm afraid she might take a fall again. I'm thinking about playing games over Theo's house later. Theo and me live two blocks apart and we used to play when we were kids, then we stopped hanging out because we ended up in different classes at school. This year we were both in Mr. Gillespi's class and we'd started hanging out again. I want to get Bennie and Nance home so I can do my homework and get over to Theo's. Carry her, Harry, Bennie says. I want to get home. You carry her, I say. Bennie's bigger than me. I don't understand why he isn't stronger than me. Dad's bigger and stronger. Even Mom. But Bennie's bigger than me but I can always beat him in a fight. I can't, harry, Bennie wails, huffing. Come on, you carry her. Nancy is just sucking on her ice, waving her picture around. She isn't listening. She's happy again, because she can never remember anything for more than two minutes. She's brain damaged, I think. I told Mom that and she told me to never ever say that again. But I think it's true. I wasn't as dumb as Nancy when I was a kid. As long as she's quiet, though, I don't mind her. Bennie, though, even when he's not talking he's noisy. We're walking past the empty house on South street when Greg Pikler shows up. He's only got one of his goons with him, Mike Limmer, we call him Limey. Limey by himself is just a tall kid who's already got pimples. Bennie snuffles fearfully when Greg stands up from the fence he was sitting on, half a block away, but I don't feel too bad. If it's just him and Lime, we're okay. Plus, Nancy's with us. Greg wouldn't dare do anything to her. Dad would tell Bennie and me to take it like a man, but Greg would get the death penalty if he made Nancy cry. Mom would twist his dumb head off. When we're close, we stop, and they stop, and we're facing each other across the sidewalk. I feel better then. If Greg was going to pound us, he would have just jumped us. Nancy stops and stares up at everyone, sucking on her ice. "Hey, it's big-ass Benjamin." Pikler says. "What'samatter, big-ass. You look out of breath." Bennie snuffles. Part of his problem, he doesn't know how to reply. Limey giggles. "Why'd you have to be such a fag about the test today, big-ass? Huh? I got two weeks detention for that. Just because you couldn't move your fat arm." "Big-ass." Limey says, like it's the best thing he's ever heard. Bennie is crying now. I look back at him, tears are coming out of his eyes and he's crying, without making any noise. Greg leans forward suddenly, extending his arms. "HA!" he shouts. Bennie shrieks a little and jumps back, losing his balance and falling flat on his ass, a perfect imitation of Nancy, who is staring down at him solemnly, sucking on her ice. Greg and Limey laugh, and point. Before I even know it, I'm running forward. Before Greg sees me, I crash into him, and knock him down, and I'm slapping his face, over and over again. I start repeating a phrase I heard Dad say on the phone weeks ago, something I've been saving like the naked woman picture I found in his desk drawer last year. I hadn't said it aloud yet. I was slapping Greg's face and I was saying the phrase over and over again, once for each slap. "Fucking bastard. Fucking bastard." I don't know what it means. But Dad said it on the phone and he was angry, and I'm angry now, and it seems to make sense. "Fucking bastard. Fucking bastard." Greg manages to push me off and he gets to his feet and runs away. I look up from the sidewalk. Bennie is still sitting on his ass, but he isn't crying any more. Nancy is crying, though, her ice still in her hand but forgotten, she's screaming. Limey is standing there too. "I'm telling your Mom what you said." he announces, and runs away after Pikler. I'm sweating, and shaking. My face feels hot. My hands are numb. I get to my feet, walk over to Nance, and pick her up. She doesn't fight me. She stops screaming, and settles into a steady snuffling cry. Bennie is still looking up at me. The tears are still wet on his chubby face. Come on, Bennie, I say. Come on. I start walking away. I don't look to see if he gets up and follows. ---OCTOBER--- I go over to the mantel and pick Bennie up. He weighs about two pounds. I toss him from hand to hand, wondering how its possible. "Jesus! Harry, you scared the hell out of me. And put that down! Jesus, Harry, you always manage to amaze me. Put it down!" And there's Nance, brittle, backlit, smoking. She grabs Bennie from my hand and places him back on the mantel, nudges him this way and that until he sits back in the little circle in the dust. I let her. "How is it that he weighs so little, in there?" I ask no one in particular. "Can't you just be nice, Harry?" "Okay." I look around the dark room. "She didn't change much, since we were here." "No. She liked it the way it was." "Now it's ours, I guess." "Do you want to live here?" "No." "Neither do I." "We've got to do something with the place." Nancy's hand is somehow on my shoulder, squeezing, just like Dad did. I stiffen, just as before. "Will you stay on for a little while? Do you have to go back right away?" This from the harridan who had just yelled at me in a little Mom imitation. Nance smelled strongly of smoke. I looked at her, faint edges and smoke. She was past thirty, now. "Maybe," I said. I didn't want to, really. "But I won't stay here." "Stay with me. I've got the room." Divorce gifted you with room. "Okay, sis, I'll stay the week. I got that much off anyway. We can get the ball rolling on a plan, okay?" "Thanks, Harry." Squeezing my shoulder again. We Dublens, we die. We die in an odd order. The wind is whoo-whoo-whooing outside, banging the tree against the upstairs windows. I ask Nance if she remembered she used to build a fort from her mattress and pillows and blankets when it stormed, would light candles. How Mom feared she would burn the house down. "I couldn't sleep." Nancy said, smiling, I imagine. "I used to lie awake and listen to that tree banging," I said carefully, picking dried words off the flames and placing them with care, "and think it was Bennie." "Oh, Harry," "Trying to get in. To dry off." "I thought you were going to be nice." I am being nice. ---JUNE--- Bennie and I creeping up along the Moonan's fence, wary of their humongous dog who hunts kids like us for between-meal snacks. I push my hair out of my face. I had gone in to Peppone the barber the week before, he greeted me like a lost relative returned, happy, smiling, joking. I asked him just to trim me, an inch maybe, no more. Just keep it out of my eyes. Peppone repeating the request like it was a foreign language. He butchered me. One minute, he's done, he's cut my hair with a rough square shape. It isn't in my eyes. It looks like I cut it myself. And for that, five dollars. Oh well, Dad's money. Bennie is sweating, a big stain down the back of his T-shirt. His jeans have slipped down and I am watching the jellylike undulation of his buttocks encased within sweaty boxer shorts. I try not to imagine what lay beyond that thin fabric barricade. Bennie embarrasses me. I am only his brother when we are alone. He puts up a hand and we pause, sniffing the wind for rottweiler. Then he waves and we start to straighten up, until we're peering just over the fence, our noses resting on the wood. I can do this without stretching, but Bennie is trembling on his tiptoes. I can hear him breathing, it seems really loud. We don't say anything. Jenna Moonan is lying out by her family's pool in a two-piece green bikini. She's beautiful. She's nineteen, and goes to college, and drives a red Corvette. I think Jenna is the prettiest girl I have ever seen, and here is more of her than I'd ever seen before. I study her, taking in every detail. Her skin is white, milky. She looks like she just naturally smells like flowers. Lying on her towel on the grass, she might be asleep. Bennie's having trouble staying up on his toes, peering down at her, and has to give up and sink down to rest for a moment. I don't even glance at him. The way Jenna's thigh curves into her ass, covered by the thin green material, is the most interesting thing I've ever