June 6: Purchase supplies for grueling creative hell to come: Twinkies Family Pack, six two-liter bottles of Birch Beer, 12 cartons of cigarettes, two fifths of Jack Daniels, one gallon of distilled water, one box of Depends Adult Undergarments, six randomly selected girlie magazines, one live chicken, and a dictionary of some sort.

June 7: Refer to previous issue of The Inner Swine to ascertain what ridiculous subject I chose for the next theme and editorial, not that anyone notices, or cares. Scratch head repeatedly wondering what the hell I was thinking when I came up with that dull topic.

June 8: Sit down at computer to write editorial. Spend 13 hours playing Half Life instead.

June 9: Sit down at computer to write editorial. Get distracted by first bottle of Jack Daniels.

June 11: Wake up in Rhode Island with someone else’s pants on.

June 12-14: Nursing hangover.

June 15-30: Whereabouts unknown, memory unreliable. I have a matchbook from The Huxton Motor Lodge in Akron. Put this under the heading of “research”.

July 1-6: Celebrate the Fourth of July with therapeutic cocktails. Write a few brilliant revelations on cocktail napkins for the editorial. Later, suffer temporary blindness from drinking homemade liquor.

July 7: Swear off the booze. Spend day shivering.

July 8-12: Worms oozing out of walls, flies the size of seagulls invade, have a long conversation with a sewer rat in a smoking jacket.

July 13: Take up drinking again out of self-defense. Locate cocktail napkins with brilliant ideas. Only one that is legible reads “The cheese is burning!” Decide to start fresh.

July 14: Sit down at computer to write editorial. Spend 13 hours playing Half Life instead.

July 15-16: Wake up at 5am inspired, sit down and write straight through evening into next day. After 36 hours at keyboard, I have a few hundred pathetic words that amount to a weak, five-page article as my cornerstone for the new issue. I decide it is brilliant. 

July 17: After getting some honest criticism on the new editorial, I check the Holdover File for old articles rejected from earlier issues. All I find are more cocktail napkins. One has “Socks with eyes!” scrawled on it.

July 18: Karen Accavallo calls me and promises to supply at least 30 pages of material for next issue, claiming that she has several brilliant articles mapped out in her head. Half the issue is already full with this contribution, so I head off to happy hour.

July 21: Having slept in the Port Authority bus station the night before covered in own sick, I arrive home to find my pockets stuffed with more cocktail napkins. One reads “Vinegar jellybeans!” I soak in a tub of ice water for rest of day and almost drown myself.

July 22-31: I go off on spiritual journey into the New Jersey wild, searching for my lost soul. I contract some virus from odd purple berries and become a one-man celebration of bodily fluids. Lost in the wild, I assume I am going to die and decide to write a will and testament. I only have cocktail napkins to write this on.

August 1: I am discovered by some teenagers, who inform me that I am only a few hundred feet from the highway. Then they jeer me and steal all my stuff, except my cocktail napkins. As I walk to the highway, I find my last will and testament makes no sense. Apparently I have left Karen Accavallo my collection of go-go boots, but I don’t own any go-go boots.

August 2-4: Shamed by my recent foibles, I force myself to write an article for the new issue. What results is three pages about why I hate everyone. I decide it’s been done, and thank god Karen is supplying me with all that material.

August 5: My birthday.

August 28: I awaken in my bedroom with no memory of the previous three weeks. My apartment is clean and orderly and all my bills have been paid, my laundry done, and my dishes cleaned and stacked. I am clean-shaven and feeling fit, but have no conscious memory of my birthday or the days that followed. I realize that I have three days to produce the magazine. I check my machine and find a message from Karen, who complains bitterly that I did not give her enough time, so she will not write anything for me.

August 29-31: Fueled by coffee, nicotine, black beauties, and pornography, I write for 45 hours straight about anything that enters my mind. I even manage 500 words on pubic hair. By the end I am shaking and sweating, hunched painfully over my keyboard. I estimate that I have just barely 55 pages of material.

August 31: I read my stuff again after a bath and a nap. It’s terrible. I call an elderly Hungarian man I know and purchase 20,000 words of his psychotic rantings and decide to pass it off as my own. It’s worked before. It’s how I graduated college.

September 1-3: In a 72-hour Pagemaker marathon, I finish off the second bottle of Jack Daniels and all my cigarettes, flowing WordPerfect text files. I discover that the issue is only 43 pages long. Another five hours of playing with the leading and kerning brings it up to 60 pages. I crawl into bed and then realize with a start that I’m at work and I’ve just laid down on the floor of my cubicle. I cannot discern a heartbeat. Apparently I have been fired.

September 4-5: After a brief rest period, I break out the trained monkeys and circus midgets.

September 6: I sell a few pints of blood and semen for postage money and mail this fine issue right to your dismal hovel. The postal workers are mean to me. One kicks me in the ass as I exit the post office.

September 7: Jeff’s Day of Binge Drinking