Due to the English language’s lack of a non-gender specific singular third person pronoun, I will use the grammatically incorrect term ‘they’ unless gender has already been established.  Or I will just use the masculine default, since men are better than women.  I apologize to any English majors I have offended.  Some names have been changed, at random, just to keep everyone guessing.

Preface

I am unwell.  Nothing so dramatic as a cold, but as sure as the sun came up yesterday (I’ll not bet on tomorrow - regardless of the odds) there is something wrong with me.  It has to do with the way I think or, more likely, my tendency to exercise the option to think at any given opportunity.  For reasons we are about to explore, this contemptible obsession with cerebration has left me marked unfit for civilization.

I hope you don’t mind the scenic route.  It wouldn’t do to explore the workings of a nonlinear mind via linear methods.  Ultimately, all things are connected.  The connections between things are what make knowledge applicable.  Follow any train of thought far enough, and you can wind up at any station.  Your luggage might even be waiting for you when you get there.

Don’t be confused – this isn’t about me, though I will talk about myself a great deal, at length, regardless of whether or not anyone is listening.  This is a book about Us.  Not us personally, as I am sorely prepared to write anything about you, whom I likely do not know, but Us as a society.  Consider this a sociography with autobiographical tendencies and an overbite.  Naturally, a great deal of what I have to say is opinion, which can be neither true nor false…

    …Unless I lie about my opinion altogether.

It’s not the dress; It’s your ass.

Unfortunately, I was raised to believe that Honesty is a virtue.  This concept, as I would later learn, is a falsehood.  Honesty is, in fact, a most loathsome vice.  Civilized ‘honesty’ is tempered with tact.  For the uninitiated, tact is the art of telling delicately crafted lies to hide uncomfortable truths.  Whoever said honesty is the best policy was clearly never an insurance salesman.  We are only supposed to be honest when the truth is pleasant and convenient to those around us, and yet we are taught as children to be honest at all times.  One must filter their truth through a fine screen of deceit.

I suspect someone was lying to me.

It was too late.  The lesson of honesty stuck before the art of tactful deception ever had a chance.  The worst part about the whole thing is that because of my stance on ‘tact’ I am a ‘fib quibbler’ (which sounds vaguely dirty). 

I strongly encourage you to laugh at this point (or any other, for that matter).  The grammatical device I employed two sentences ago is called wordplay.  You can expect a great deal more as this train wreck unfolds, but I’ll only point out this first one to help get you started. 

Take note that your intelligence has just been insulted – That’s a device called sarcasm.  The basic premise I have just assailed you with, is that you are too stupid to spot crappy wordplay and cheap sarcasm.  Feel free to laugh at yourself now.  Everyone else is, anyway.   I digress.

In retrospect, it seems the whole point of honesty is to trick children into admitting guilt, thus streamlining the administration of discipline for those charged with the upbringing of said children.  As I recall, the value of honesty would depreciate wildly when my parents were put to the test.

One quarter of a century later, it seems nothing has changed.  People have long since learned not to come to me for unwarranted ego strokes.  The meat sack that drags me around has grown and aged, but I am essentially the same - Except slower and fatter.  Every day I wake up to an indifferent world.  Every day I try to make some small impact – some change in the madness that surrounds me.  Every day I fail to meet my goals.  At the end of it all, and almost invariably at odd hours, I slide off to the warm grip of somnolescent oblivion to remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force – Usually my bladder, which I suppose is an inside force.

Trapped in a cycle of self-perpetuated defeat, my ambitions outpace my motivation, my energies, and my abilities.  For this, I blame only myself.  For one thing, I have no interest in the mind control box.  I do not watch T.V.  Nor do I have any desire to do so.  Its myriad discordant images, which are the centerpiece of the civilized home (and the pinnacle of modern marketing), would dull the edge of my ambitions as it has for so many bored, soulless drones, but I’d rather just think for myself. 

Whoever said that religion is the opiate of the masses must have never seen television.  Religion is fucking whippets compared to television.  Just a quick hit on Sunday to take the edge off.  Television, on the other hand, gets center stage for the rest of the week.  If you should ever get a chance, take a close look at someone who is watching their favorite show.  Notice the blank and glassy stare, the complete facial relaxation, the intensity of the watching.  Studies have shown that brain activity in subjects who were watching television is actually lower than brain activity during sleep.  Television puts you into a hypnotic state.  This is part of what makes television such a powerful advertising force.  The T.V. is programming you (except for the older ones that never figured out how to get your 12:00 to stop blinking).  Not in the outlandish conspiracy theory sort of way, in which secret signals in the broadcast trigger droves of zombies to inexplicable mass suicide, but in a more insidious manner that affects what you crave and where you consume.

In X-treeemis

Coupled with my tendency to think, my non-addiction to the slave maker has left me entirely incapable of interfacing with society.  I simply lack the adaptor that would allow me to plug into the great machine.  My overdeveloped sense of self has left me immune to the gratifying solace of the hive mind.  This loss is one that I feel profoundly.  I imagine it to be marvelous to be able to look to others for self-realization.  This is the same instinct that has given rise to street gangs, lynch mobs, and the PTA.  There must be a joy beyond reckoning involved in submitting to the will of the herd mentality.  How else could so many people be able to turn over their will to the commercialistic whims of MTV?

It is amusing to see an entire generation of people ‘bucking the establishment’ even as they mindlessly feed it.  Bad attitude and rebellion have become a marketing ploy.  Not you, of course.  You are far too X-treeem™ to be a part of that crowd – No one has a leash on you.  You are your own person…

One might assume at this point that I am opposed to marketing and probably even capitalism.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  With a bit of luck, when it's finished, I hope to be able to hawk this literary disaster off at a few clams a copy. 

I don’t begrudge marketeers for utilizing effective selling tactics.  It is the consuming public that grates on my nerves - blindly following every trend that is placed in front of them, fearful that someone might find in their person some deviation from the sanctified norm.  This in spite of the fact that the ‘norm’ is in continual flux.  These same people sit around and say stupid shit like “what were we thinking in the ‘80s with those ridiculous hairstyles?”  Then they go get their faces tattooed, and wear their underwear visibly.

In pursuit of this social normality, people abandon their ambitions and opt instead to spend the bulk of their waking life performing repetitious busywork for wages intended to help slake their master’s lust for monetary wealth – Just enough to get you hooked, but not enough for you to move on to greater independent opportunity.  Opportunities like dinner that doesn’t involve instructions like ‘add seasoning packet’.  The hogs on top of the pile hate to lose skilled workers before they get the chance to lay them off without warning.  The best part of a recessive economy, after all, is the massive lay-offs, seemingly at random.  Immediately workers abandon any hope for a raise, quit whining about trivialities like overtime pay or hazardous work conditions, and toil relentlessly in hopes that they might salvage their indentured servitude - lest they become unable to purchase the things necessary to keep up with the established ‘norm’.

Why all the effort?  Why is it necessary for people to ‘Keep Up with the Joneses’?  After a great deal of research and introspective consideration, I have come to a conclusion that can be summed up in one word. 

Pussy

Possibly every advancement in human history can be traced directly back to this one all-powerful force of motivation.  Prehistoric man was content to dine on berries and roots.  Then an opportunist (we’ll call him Og) found that eating dead animals was superior to the standard fare of the day, thus raising the bar for the rest of mankind.  Almost overnight, Og is the only guy around who’s getting any cave-pussy.  Immediately the other cave dudes sprung to action.  First came weapons.  Fresh meat is tastier than the carrion that Og was serving.  Later came the discovery and utilization of fire, so that the guys could further impress the ladies with their cooking skills.  And so on and so forth all the way up to present day.

Socrates?  Copernicus?  Entirely motivated by pussy.  It was only later that mankind discovered that intelligence is actually a pussy deterrent (much to my dismay).  Christopher Columbus?  He clearly wanted to hook up with some exotic pussy.  The only passage he was looking for was the southern one (or possibly the southeastern one).  The Wright Brothers?  Those guys were clearly on a hunt to be the first people in the mile high club.

Even today, Pussy is almost wholly responsible for everything men do.  It starts with school, where they teach us how to sit in rows and how to conform.  From there we must proceed to college so that we can get the education we need in order to land a decent wage so that we can buy the house, and the fancy car, etcetera.  Why, you ask?

Money

Money is reputed to have been invented by prostitutes as a means of paying for pussy, which remains its primary application to this day.  This allowed them to create a power structure with them at the top.  Gold later replaced Pussy as the basis behind money but only after it was discovered that gold was worth at least 100 times its weight in Pussy.

Before you fire off that hate mail (Dr.Avery@Zyxomma.com), allow me to clear up one point.  I’m not saying that women are heartless, power hungry gold-diggers who are willing to trade their pussies for monetary remuneration.  Only that the vast and overwhelming majority of women are heartless, power hungry gold-diggers who are willing to trade their pussies for monetary remuneration.  For every ounce of shit men get for being womanizing beasts, women manage to dodge a pound of shit for using the power of the pussy with no concern for anyone but themselves.

Whether utilized in an ethical manner or not, one thing is certain:  Without pussy, mankind would still be living in caves eating twigs and roots.  Furthermore, I am convinced that if enough suitably attractive women publicly guarantee pussy to the inventor of cold fusion, we’d have the problem licked faster than the oil companies could bury it. 

If you don’t have money, and aren’t remarkably attractive, all hope is not lost.  Just do what I did:

Become a musician

This is a skill that requires many hours of arduous practice, and a profound patience, but in as little as 6 months, (if you really work at it) musicianship will repay you with more pussy than you’ve ever before known (with women who are clearly out of your league).  The wonderful thing about music is that all but the most soulless of women can be turned to malleable putty when music is applied. 

Most people will choose the guitar as their instrument.  I started with guitar and learned other instruments from there.  Surprisingly, the flute is the most effective bait, especially if you get good at it.  The great thing about the flute is that there is practically no competition, so if you develop the skill, you’ll likely be the best flute player around at any given time.  As an added bonus, many women play or used to play the flute – giving even the most socially inept loser an unfailing icebreaker. 

A word of warning:  You aren’t going to impress many ladies with a tuba, and you shouldn’t even mention the accordion.

The problem with becoming a musician is that in order to achieve even the lowest levels of proficiency you must practice as much as possible (preferably around 8 hours a day) for several months.  For the first few months, it is unlikely you will play anything as complex as a song and most people will quit at this point, discouraged that it didn’t pan out right away.  However, once you get past the first stage, and are capable of playing entire songs, the true nature of music rears its ugly head.  Day by day, it consumes you, feeding upon your delusions of grandeur until you are hooked.  Suddenly you find that you cannot bear to stray too far from your instrument, and you find yourself fidgeting incessantly in its absence.  Eventually you find yourself ignoring the women you learned the instrument to impress, and losing interest in all other pursuits. 

Next issue:  One Stratocaster To Rule Them All