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Friday, February 26 2010 3:30 AM
All those who count themselves men come before me and hop for your very lives! Meet me on the field of battle when you are at your strongest and fight a battle you cannot hope to win. Please the mighty gods with your skill as you challenge their chosen champion. Clash with the last keeper of hopscotch law in the sight of your ancestors. If you dare the grim hopscotch reaper and fall in honorable hop combat an eternal paradise awaits you in the golden halls of hopscotchery. But be warned, should you taste triumph you will carry my curse until the day you, too, lose the favor of the gods. -Cigarettes Tuesday, Feb 23 2010 1:30 AM
1 – The battle had been fierce and vicious. The galactic super villain Cigarettes had used poisons deadly enough to weaken even the heroic man of steel. Though he had slain men, women, children and just about every other thing that walks or crawls along this cursed earth, Cigarettes couldn’t triumph over the Son of Krypton. His brilliant mind had laid innumerable traps and his symbiotic tobacco implants had given him the strength to go to blows against Superman. The fight had ended in a single crushing strike. Although the coming of death has closed his wicked eyes, Cigarettes can still hear through his blood filled ears the sound of approaching footsteps. He can still feel on his wounded skin the impact and sting of tears and he knows they are not his own for he has never cried. Though his soul and empathy have atrophied he can feel sadness towering over him. “If only he had used his powers for good, instead of evil,” the calm and strong voice says, though the timbre has been altered and filled with regret. Cigarettes attempts to open his broken jaw, to tell Superman that it was just a difference of views, one wanted to create, one wanted to destroy and recreate. The pain mounts as he struggles to think of all the justifications and rationalizations he used in the past. Finally his cracked and smoke stained lips part, his right hand, hanging limply from a shattered radius, will rises one last time. His fingers pull muscles over jagged bone as they flex into postion. Superman looks on, momentarily astonished to see the hand curl into a fist, with one finger raised. “Go fuck yourself Superman, you tit-licker.” 2 – It wasn’t the biggest mountain but the climb was challenging. The view, completely worth it. Only a few of Cigarettes best friends have come along on the camping trip. The valley below sways in the wind and a flock of birds rise and fall to more stable roosts. Everyone looks around in silence. The trip up had shown them the beauties of nature up close and in detail, all the better to help them understand the true depth and grandness laid out before them. Cigarettes will smoke. In his heart he will hate the world. With his sharp eyes he will see all the death and struggle in nature. He will watch the wolves eat the fawn. He will see the mothers abandon their young. He will sense the struggle and smell the desperation of the aged. He will contribute nothing. It will make him want to scream. The cigarette will be burned at the filter. As he is about to flick it over the edge and watch it spark and cinder against the rocks he will pray. Not to thank god, ask him why, or question his plan. In his churning brain and icy heart he will speak to god. “I could do better.” Then lightning. Everyone will be stunned, blinded and deafened by the bolt. The underbrush will begin to smoke and from a flaming ring of shattered and melted rock a figure will rise up. “That fucking hurt!” Like a sonic stiletto he shrieks but his soul repeats itself “I could have done better.” More lightning. The figure drops again, no one will be able to hear that he’s still breathing. Terrified of the rising flames around them they will scatter into the distance, back to the cities where they pretend they aren’t part of that horror that Cigarettes saw. And there amongst the suffering of the only things he could feel sorry for the man named Cigarettes will burn away. 3 – Cigarettes opened the door and filled his lungs with some fresh and cool air for a change. He’d come up to the top of this roof to jump off. His face went blank, he had expected to see more people up there. After all, there were some 25 burning stories of New York City high rise under his feet. Over the edge he saw the people on the floors below choosing between jumping or burning to death. The sound of sirens didn’t shake him. Only when he felt one of the floors collapse did he begin to walk the perimeter to see if there was anything he could jump to. On the east side he found it. A building three stories shorter and only two lanes away with a tall cistern on the near side. Then he saw him. Ten years old at a stretch, closer to eight. Alone Cigarettes could have made the jump, but with a kid on his back there was no way. “You want to live?” He asked just to make sure. The child nodded. As he blinked Cigarettes could see the ash free parts of his upper eye lids. “Sit tight for a second.” He offered the child a smoke, at first his small hand remained at his side. “Come on, they make you more grown up.” The child just coughed but Cigarettes assured him that by the end of the pack he’d be a pro. He told the boy about how to talk to girls and write college entrance essays. He warned the nameless scamp to be careful of things that are bad and to protect things that are good and to always watch out for becoming a bad person himself. He explained what it meant to love and how not to set a building on fire while smoking in a broom closet. He pulled out his wallet and handed the kid a stack of money, a picture of a girl and a map to where he had buried the rest. Then as the tears on the child’s face streaked down and turned the ash to mud Cigarettes lifted him up over his shoulder. He took a running start, jumped and ten feet from the other building heaved. He still couldn’t hear the sirens or the roar of the flame. But as the windows flashed by he could hear the clang of an 80 pound object against a metal cistern cover. “See ya in hell kiddo.” -Cigarettes Friday, Feb 19 2010 3:15 PM
In the name of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, I fucking love Kit-Kats. These little shit ingots are constructed out of pure goodness. The three wafers and two layers of chocolate remind me of a confectionary incarnation of the five pillars of Islam. When the Madhi rids this world of injustice I have no doubt that Kit-Kats will be spared because only they, alone amongst all candy bars, do justice to their ingredients. I don’t have any scripture from the Quran or Hadith to support this view but I once heard a camel tell me that the 100th name of Allah was Kit-Kat. May the fleas of a thousand goats infest the sheets of those who question the goodness of Kit-Kats. Jesus Christ please bless these Kit-Kats which we are about to eat. Please allow them to nourish our bodies that we may do your will. The three wafers symbolize for us the holy trinity in blessed form. Please god let us use the energy provided by their sugary goodness to twist your goodness into our own selfish purposes. Please let the memorably good taste and packaging distract us from remembering the parts of the bible that say things we don’t follow. Please let these Kit-Kats be like that cool miracle with the fish and bread so they never run out and we can just get fat forever. OMG… I mean Richard Dawkins. I wish I could initiate a string of electro-chemical process that simulates reciprocated love with Kit-Kats. I believe that evidence (99% of which I am not qualified to understand) suggests that I only feel this way because my body evolved to love things that are fatty and sugary because those things were beneficial to my ancestors. When I stack the broken pieces in a spiral it reminds me of the fond feelings I have for cytosine, guanine, thymine and adenine. The goodness of Kit-Kats is nearly enough to cancel out the intense feelings of emptiness I feel as a result of my begrudging acknowledgement that my pathetic meaningless life of low level management and intellectual elitism (which I can only claim by proxy) is all that I will ever know. Holy karma-clearing Buddha these Kit-Kats are good. Whoever invented these tasty sons of bitches had to have been a bodhisattva. The mysteries of the universe are laid bare to me and all my koans are answered as I crunch the layered goodness between my mortal teeth. I long to be reincarnated one more time as a Kit-Kat before I move on to nirvana. The simple truth of the Kit-Kat makes me question the assertion that ours is a world of suffering. Yet the four interconnected sticks lead me back to the four noble truths. I am a strict Jain. Nestle uses animal rennet in Kit-Kats so I’ve never tried them but I hear they’re pretty good. My wife makes a good vegan Kit-Kat though. I mean it’s probably almost as good. Hey these Kit-Kats are cheaper when you buy them in bulk. It’s not as if they go bad right? This huge bag probably has at least 613 in there, that’s like one for each mitzvot. I know the guy who did the ad work for these ya know? I don’t know about heaven and hell but these guys, they’re pretty good. I mean I can understand why the messiah didn’t come back before these were invented. Kosher, too. -Cigarettes Wednesday, Feb 17 2010 2:15 AM
Yes it's true. I'm the meanest person in the world... but only in my head. So back when Cigs and I were in high school, we knew a young man by the name of... let's call him Bradley. Bradley was an easy outcast- different in oh so many ways. Not great looking, scrawny figure, always dressed in black, confused about his newly discovered homosexuality. But his coup-de-grace of weirdness? He was an early-stage schizophrenic. He hadn't gotten to the point of talking to himself, but he would sit there and talk to you without end, whether you were listening or not, about the craziest shit. If you need an example, think "Hey, man, wanna hear about my Queen Elizabeth I fanfic? It's about Elizabeth's secret half-alien brother, John!" Only, he didn't preface it as historical fan fiction. He said it as if it was fact. Anyway, to the point. I'm sure this kid contemplated suicide more than once during his teenage years. What more could be expected of an alienated, depressed, mentally unstable, ugly, gay teenager? He never went through with it - at least not to my knowledge. However, I'm sure I could have pushed him to it if I had said what went through my mind every time I saw his face. "Hey, Bradley, are the voices losers, too?" Another tale from my high school years. We can all admit that during our high school years we're less than knowledgeable about the full extent of sex. Not necessarily the mechanics, but the consequences. We can also admit that while some of us are less than knowledgeable, others are downright dumb as dick. A girl I knew- let's call her Sarah -was having a conversation with some of her friends about sex. Her friends were talking about how sex makes your vagina looser, and Sarah just couldn't let her friends go on being so ignorant. She instructed them, letting them know that no, in fact, every time you had sex your vagina got tighter. Yeah. There's something you should know about Sarah. She had horrible teeth. Like an English woman who had gotten smacked across the mouth with a two-by-four and spent her spare time snacking on scrap metal dipped in tartar bad teeth. The instant I heard about her conversation, I thought "Someone should tell Sarah that giving blowjobs makes your teeth straighter." I could give ten more tales, but I'll wrap up by saying that today I was watching the Winter Olypmics men's solo figure skating event. Now, if you've read all of our articles like you should have before you read this one, you'll know I have absolutely nothing against gay people. But all I could think as I watched this competition was "Man, I wish I had tickets to that. I'd just sit up in the back row and yell 'HOMOOOOO!' over and over through every performance." But I wouldn't. I just like to think I would. -Sideburns Saturday, Feb 13 2010 8:40 PM
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This is a new and fearless world. But in a day in age where we can reasonably expect to have 70 years to stand around with our thumbs up our asses should we so choose we seem ever hungry for danger. The media sells us a spoon full of scary and sugar. We pay to ride coasters, see dangerous animals up close, we drive without our seatbelts for just a little bit of teasing danger. But there is true terror still out there. Horror yet haunts this world. A few of us can even find it. So it is with great pride and a warning to the weak hearted that I present you: The Seven Most Terrible Things (That can happen to your porksword) I don’t want anyone to get a boner reading this shit. To that end I’m not going to use my typical flowery and exacting descriptions, instead I’ve opted for a more allusive and indirect approach. This content has been rated N.B.A. (Not Boner Appropriate) by the tobacco smoking ratings board of me. #7 - So I’m on top of this girl on my couch. It’s not her first time or anything and we’re both really into it. She's getting really loud and making this really strange noise. The kind of noise a donkey would make if you told it to sing along with a weed eater. Not that I’m a silent church mouse myself. After Sister Christian by Nightrider came back up on the stereo que we finally finish and I could feel this incredible warmth between her legs. #6 - As anyone who’s ever made the wrong choice can tell you, don’t pick up girls in bars and take them to your place. They might pee on your couch. I’m no pick-up artist but like any good wolf I have an eye for the (mentally) sick. So after chatting up an attractive girl who looked sufficiently like an escaped asylum patient, in a relaxed out of the way bar we ended up back at her place. The night went exactly as anticipated except I fell asleep next to her. When I woke up I could feel a hand searching through my boxers like there was candy down there. This created certain expectations. So when I opened my eyes to see an entirely different and much more macho looking girl with her hand down my shorts I was forced to restructure those ideas. Just as I was about to figure out what was happening she grabbed onto my nuts like… like I can’t think of anything witty to say because thinking about it hurts so bad. I started screaming like a pig pen on fire which woke the other girl up. The resulting tussle ended with me making a limping no pants dash across the parking lot with one screaming would-be castrator close behind. It was one of those hyper-adrenaline moments where in an absolutely continuous and no stop action I unlocked the door, got in the seat, started up and peeled out of there. Rest assured my chest and nuts were both throbbing as if to express to me in Morse code what a grievous mistake I had made. #5 - I don’t make a habit out of dating. I mean someday I’m going to wake up and ask myself: “What are you going to do with all this money and free time?” When that takes place I’ll find a steady girlfriend. In the alternative I keep in touch with girls I know are fairly easy to get with. Around the time this story takes place I was going to school full time, working full time at one job and part time at another. I had to be at work the following morning at 8 A.M. So when she and I got back from the bar already full of expensive liquor and fatigue I had to psyche myself into carrying out the whole ritual. It was five in the morning and I’m just finishing up and walking back to the shower when she grabbed me by the wrist.
“Right okay some cuddle time, I can do this.” I think, pondering the possibility of showing up the next day to cook rich people’s food while dried cunt juice flakes fall of my body. She pulled me down and grabbed the other wrist. In the dripping light of the early morning I can see dimly that her eyes have been replaced with those from a rattle snake. #4 - I don’t want the FBI showing up at my house and this is where shit starts getting pretty fucked up so: All characters in the following work of fiction are 18 years or older. The summer immediately after I lost my virginity, when I could have passed for 13, I was tooling around the neighborhood on my bike looking for girls, because unlike most people my age I had discovered what at the time I considered to be the true purpose and meaning of life. I had met one girl about my age at the local pool and we’d spent some time together at my house but siblings or parents were always around to keep me from sealing the deal. So it was quite a relief when I saw her on her bike and she invited me to come over to her place. Using the kind of blunt linguistics typical for a girl 5 years younger she promised that her parents were gone. We pretended to watch TV for about 30 minutes before she got up and told me to come back to her room in a few minutes. I can’t tell you, and hopefully I don’t need to, how much time flow was warped right then. But after about 3 minutes I appeared in her door way. There she was, naked except for her socks and shoes bent over her pink bed. Her multi-colored pillows in a pile on the floor with her clothes. Her head turned over her shoulder, blond hair going down her back, break your heart blue eyes fixed firmly on me. Her lips slipped into a smile and she didn’t say to me, she told me: “Fuck my ass till my shoes are filled with blood.” The real horror here is that I was too young and stupid to realize at the time that she was living in a sexually abusive hell and had no conception of what love or empathy were because no one had ever shown her any. To this day the fact that I didn’t show her any makes me wish I could crush this sick world with myself in it. I was lucky and her family moved before I could compound my wrongs. That’s haunting so call the fucking ghost hunters/busters. My dick is haunted. #3 - Things continue in the direction of the mind shattering with this two part piece in the number three slot. It was late fall in a shady low traffic area of the university, the perfect place to have your pick of empty benches and smoke with a suicidal fervor. I sat down about 30 feet away from the only other girl in the courtyard and smoked an entire cigarette to the music of her gentle sobbing. Six or seven people just walked right by her, only sparing an odd look. She didn’t seem to be getting any better so I took a chance and went over to offer her a cigarette. She accepted wordlessly. And we smoked together in silence, hardly even making eye contact. It wasn’t weird or awkward and I completely expected to leave with only the satisfaction of having increased the number of cigarettes smoked. As she was scraping the cherry along the bench her other hand slid over mine and soon she was writing her number on the back of my hand. After that she got up and walked away. I called her that weekend and we met for dinner. She was only slightly more talkative but she did invite me back to her place. She didn’t really waste a lot of time once we were there before she turned off the lights and started getting kissy. As I went to take her sweater off I was on the lookout for the typical things she might have been trying to hide beneath that layer of wool and the darkness. Strange tattoos, a well hidden paunch… cesarean section scars? No. But close. As I pulled it up over her head pushing the fabric over her raised arms I could feel something strange. Something that in the dark I struggled to come to grips with. Two on each arm, deep, jagged, hot, vertical lines running from elbow two the wrist. Suicide scars, not the cry for help one either, the ones where you went to the hospital and used up ten percent of the local blood supply to stay alive. In a way that made me sick to my stomach I was totally turned on. Part two of #3 - I didn’t stay in touch with scars very well but not so very long after Valentine’s day was approaching and even creeps like me don’t like to be alone. So I called her up. She was planning on spending the day alone but sounded almost happy when I presented the idea of meeting up for drinks. It went pretty much the same as last time and even though I already knew her secret she still turned the lights off pretty quickly. I don’t know if it was the booze or not but after about an hour she started drying up. If we were at my place I could have gone for my astroglide oil drum but we weren’t. Instead she flicked on the bed side lamp and picked up a razor from the half open drawer. My eyes were bugging out of my head as she slit her wrists (in that shallow, just to feel pain again kind of way) and started letting it gush down her crotch. It was dark so I can’t say she was looking me straight in the eyes but her words were not dimmed. “It’s going to be just like fucking a virgin.” #2 - I am but one man. And only so many things can happen to a person in their life time. So now we venture into incidents in which I was not a participant. However given the evidence left behind I do not doubt their veracity. Sometimes there aren’t any bedrooms left. Sometimes you’ve got to take the seats out of your parents suburban and just deal with the scratchy carpet. That’s how I heard it began. Simply enough and with all that space, no muscle cramps. But there were other things to could get hurt. So my friend in the company of his new (in more ways than one) girlfriend starts getting busy. But in the “newness” of it all seemed that she was being pushed away. Now I’m a vicious son of a bitch but I don’t bust a girl’s hymen and then deliver an orbital bombardment down her birth canal sending her six feet from the starting point. This guy had no such compunctions. Amazingly neither of them noticed the accompanying six foot trail of blood running zigzag through the back of the SUV. As a matter of fact nobody did, except of course for the cop that pulled them both over as she was being driven back to her house. He and his partner had them both in cuffs with parents on the way before anyone had the chance to explain. And with parents on site the act of explaining was the second most painful thing they had to do. #1 – The details are sketchy. A young man was in the process of hosting a parents out of town high school drinking party. A few of his older brother’s college age friends were also in attendance. One of them was, by all accounts an attractive girl who took an interest in the young host. As things began to wind down he led her up to the only unoccupied room in the house, his parents’ room. The real action begins as she’s mouthafying his doodle. She slid her hands around to his brownflower and worked one of her fingers in there. Of course this came as quite a surprise but having had a few drinks and remembering that he’s heard about this before the guy thinks “Hey somebody out there is enjoying this, let’s just see.” I have no reports on his own taste for it but soon after she had gotten the whole thing in there... Well there’s no easy way to say this but she hooked her finger and pulled it out really fast. I haven’t tried it myself but from what I gather from the available literature this can, under the right circumstances, cause an involuntary bowel evacuation to take place. That is to say he shit all over the place. In his own words “It sounded like someone turned on a shower.” His escape happened in a complete blur but as he was running out and closing the door behind him he could see her rolling around the bed, rubbing the poop over her body and… laughing. # 0 – Again this one wasn’t me.
So this guy didn’t have much experience with sex, and even less with booze. But there he was with his girlfriend about to get anal for the first time. He put it in and after a few thrusts started to feel a strange tingle. But he had never tried this before. He was excited and a little drunk so the thought of pausing to contemplate the source of this strange sensation working its way up his urethra just didn’t hold much weight. But pretty soon he started to itch, and itch bad. He pulled out of her and looked down. -Cigarettes 8:45 PM
Happy St. Valentine's Day, everybody. -Sideburns Friday, Feb 12 2010 4:15 AM
Words are important. I’m not just saying that because I’m a writer either. Valentine’s Day is upon us, a time for love and for old timers like me Christian martyrdom. So if you love someone you’ll trust them, and you’ll be honest with them right? But as it turns out… no, no you wouldn’t. At least not if you were a girl. Every girl knows what she wants. At least for special occasions, if you ask them where they want to get lunch on Tuesday you might as well do it with moon runes. You see girls have fantasies, elaborately constructed, impossible, pony-filled, diamond-encrusted, chocolate dreams. As a human being you have body hair and shed dead skin cells- these two things alone are going to keep her dreams stuck in the pipeline. The problem isn’t the flights of fancy themselves. The crux of the issue is that if you ask her what she want to be given and where she’d like to be taken she will tell you that she doesn’t know. You see the first part of her fantasy is that someone wants to fulfill it; the second part is that this person can magically guess what the rest of her plan was. She will deny having anything in mind, possibly going so far as insisting that she wants nothing. She will do this so convincingly and repeatedly that you might begin to believe her. Disappointment and subsequent disaster are imminent. What I want to know is this: even though we all know she’s lying, is it still dishonest and immature for her to do it? If so, how is that any better than any other kind of deception? If she says "What are you thinking about?" and I say "Oh just how great you are." but really I'm thinking about how her self-centeredness has prevented her from ever really looking at anyone else as anything more than dolls in her play house, is that worse? I mean should I just expect her to know that I am being insincere? Is it our responsibility to be confident enough to overcome the mixed signals she’s sending and make a blind, expensive and potentially fruitless shot in the dark? I mean if a girl I was dating told me she didn’t want anything and then on Valentine’s Day I put on a diamond necklace and proceeded to eat a whole box of chocolates right in front of her would I be an asshole? As a personal aside I can tell you that two weeks after valentines day is the perfect time to pick up girls. This is oh so telling. -Cigarettes Thursday, Feb 11 2010 1:15 AM
I suppose I feel like no matter what you tell a person about life or the way things are or the laws of physics it's all just noise until you get them to use their imagination to stimulate their senses. What I mean by that is, you can tell a kid "Objects fall at the same rate in a vaccuum." And he'll say "Okay," but his perception of the world won't be altered until you either show them or make them show themselves. Now demonstrations are for salesmen and science teachers, and I hated myself when I was the former and lack the education to call myself the latter, so I like to make people show themselves. There are few things more satisfying in this world than the look on a persons face with the pieces come together and light of comprehension fills their eyes. Unfortunately, sometimes that light is a lantern, and sometimes it's as somber and scary as a funeral pyre. Have I lost you yet? Good. Now I get to make my point. I'll give you an example. A very close friend of mine once asked me after repeated full-frontal (no pun intended) assault attempts to get laid, why it was that guys simply would not bite the bait she was putting out. Many people might be blunt and say "Look, guys think you're a whore when you proposition them directly and it turns them off." Others may have approached the situation more delicately or offered up a clichèd "Just play hard-to-get. Guys love that." Not so with me. No, my friends, I offered up only this pearl of wisdom. "Sweetie, if I threw a cheeseburger at your face, would you then want to eat it?" I expected that bright lantern of illumination, but instead I got the burning rage of the reluctantly enlightened. "I guess probably would since I'm such a fat whore." Sometimes analogies can be...confusing. -Sideburns Monday, Feb 8 2010 4:15 AM
If you will, let me introduce Cigarettes scalar theory of grossness. An example: This is a regular hamburger from a fast food joint. The odds are simply overwhelming that if you are on the internet you have eaten this kind of food before. It’s not super delicious looking unless you’re hungry. But as long as you don’t think to hard about it then it should go down fine. This is a seven stack burger. Same basic ingredients just a couple more of them. Now there are super meat eating people out there and this still might have some appeal. Maybe you work construction or something and can afford 4000 calories a day? But to most people this is no longer something they want to eat, regardless of whether you think about it very long, and especially if you start to pick it apart and really look at the thing up close. Behold! A 100 stack burger! Again, the same basic constituents. Only by vastly increasing the scale we can now sense the grossness particles with the naked eye. That is to say what was once only a buttery sheen is now clearly a trench full of grease the likes of which could hold off an advancing army. From this experiment we can demonstrate that the gross wave emissions from the ingredients must be acting in a sympathetically harmonic manner which increases the disgustingness of the product in an exponential fashion. At least to a point. I haven’t tested this with all substances but having worked in the catering industry I’ve vetted the idea with nearly every conceivable type of food. Chicken salad for example becomes gross at any level over two pounds, but a standard soup would require that no less than 5 square feet in view, less if it’s sloshing. During certain states even non organic matter can produce this effect. For example there’s just something off putting about seven or eight wet garbage bags. My projection however is that as long as the amounts involved in reaching the grossness jumping off point don’t exceed human comprehension then the theory will hold. -Cigarettes Friday, Feb 5 2010 6:30 PM
Today a man with what we could call an “attitude” deigned to grace me with his presence. I won’t bore you with details but it started with his caustic self entitled attitude and ended a little like this: “I’m sorry sir we don’t take checks.” “You don’t take checks from black people? Why didn’t you say so?” He pulled an American express card out of his wallet (the silver kind that they send pre-approved to your dog if you paid one vet bill on time) and threw it on the counter. The first rule of hurting people is to plan ahead and make sure they can’t get away so I picked it up. “No that’s not it sir, we don’t take checks from ugly men. You see I’d have to check your ID and looking at one of your face enough to make me feel ill I don’t think I could bare to see two of them at once…” the second rule of hurting people is deceptively difficult, HURT them, the way they were hurt by big Willy Tanner the school yard bully. “I don’t…” “EXCUSE ME! I DO!” I shouted, just to be contradictory. “You don’t interrupt me.” I was still holding his precious AMEX, which we also don’t take, “I wasn’t done telling you about your gut and your terrible choice of khaki and black with a white undershirt. But I don’t think I’ve got time because It’s going to take me a while to take in all those acne scars. You’re what 49? Did you go through puberty after your second failed marriage?” He was 40 at a stretch but like I said, where it hurts. He was trying to talk back to me but it wasn’t working, no one could hear him, least of all me. Most people have a mental block that keeps them from lifting cars or shouting in public. I do not, this is what lets me follow the third rule of hurting people, do not give them the opportunity to do anything that would make them feel better about themselves. At this point I flashed his card at him and was walking around the cash register to the front door. “You realize that you have to get other people drunk for you to look good right? It doesn’t help if you drink it all yourself. It’s just a shame that you’ll always be ugly on the inside.” So I was standing by the door at this point holding it open with one hand and he’s coming at me “Oh did you drop something on my counter? Normally people hand these to me. Come here and get it.” Once he was within about three feet I flipped it out the door and in a stroke of luck it sailed through the air and landed well underneath a parked car. That is the last rule of hurting people (that I just made up) make them do something that they don’t want to do. Remember when Willy Tanner made you eat dirt? Yeah something like that. At this point this guy was ON FIRE with rage. Like steam pouring out the ears teeth shatteringly cheesed off. I could tell he wanted to hit me. “You wanna punch me? You got something to back up that smart mouth of yours.” I think the concept of actually going to blows with me snapped him out of it as he hurried out the door, which I was no longer holding open. But just as he was beyond the swing of the door I stepped back out because the real last rule of hurting people is to kick them when they're down (would little Willy Tanner really have been satisfied just making you eat dirt?) “Make sure to tell all your friends not to come here. Oh nobody wants to be friends with you!” he turned to shout some vauge threat about suing me but the door had already begun to shut. -Cigarettes Thursday, Feb 4 2010 2:00 AM
THE BEST DAY EVER By Sideburns So I woke up this morning having drunk myself into a stupor because my mom had said I was adopted and she never really loved me, but I wasn't even hung over! So I said to myself, "Sideburns, you're going to make today the best day ever!" As anyone with half a brain can tell you, anyone who starts their day off with a nice cup of coffee is disgusting and likes drinking dishwater. So I went to the convenience store to buy myself a Coke because Coke is good and has caffeine and sugar already in it and I don't have to put a bunch of crap in it to make it taste halfway decent. Anyway, I walked back outside after I got my Coke and decided to set out for adventure. I decided to head West because only an idiot starts out on an adventure driving with the sun in his eyes. I was so excited to get to adventure that I didn't realize I was going 100 mph and I slightly lost control and hit a guy walking on the shoulder, knocking him about 100 feet and out of sight in a ditch on the side of the road. So of course I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop, but not before a cop had noticed me and pulled up beside me. I was sure he was going to bust me for reckless driving and failure to maintain control and maybe you know like murder or something but instead he just asked "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" So overcome with relief was I that I forgot where I was for a moment, look the cop dead in the face, put a stupid-ass cheek-to-cheek grin on my face and yelled out "That's what she said!" I was slightly horrified and what I had done but the cop burst out laughing and didn't stop, he just walked back towards his car hunched over with laughter and sped off. Still slightly incredulous at what had happened, I was somewhat slow to remember the man in the ditch, but as soon as I did I ran over to him to make sure he was dead... I mean okay. "Hey man! You dead? I mean you okay?" I said. "Hnnnghgaaaa!" "Oh, good. You're a zombie." But he wasn't just any zombie, he was the zombie of late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. "Hurrrmmmnnng." "What's that, zombie Hunter S. Thompson? You want to thank me for finally ending your drug-induced cursed soulless existence?" "Mrrrrm," he said, handing me a crumpled piece of ancient parchment. "You know of an artifact of great power, and this will show me the way? Thanks zombie Hunter S. Thompson!" "Thppt." ...and then he was gone. So, after checking the map, I continued West, to find the artifact of great power that had been placed in my path. TO BE CONTINUED -Sideburns Tuesday, February 2 2010 1:00 AM
What are your thoughts on gay marriage and adoption? Civil unions for insurance purposes more your style? Full extension (hehe) of human rights to our fellow humans? Me? I’m on the side of full on marriage for homosexuals. But I’ll be upfront, there are two legitimate complaints against it. The first is that there’s going to be a whole lot more people doing this as a tax dodge. I am proud to admit that my disdain for taxes means I will be among the first to get gay married. People already get straight married as a tax dodge but, trust me on this, it is SOOO much harder to convince girls to marry you as a cost cutting measure than a dude. It’s almost like girls have some sort of sentimental attachment to idea of a loving romantic wedding ceremony and cannot bring themselves to get over those ideals. Let’s be honest, fantasies are not only unlikely to ever be fulfilled but also have no cash value and a high opportunity cost. The other problem is a little more trivial but like gay people are going to have to start being more upfront about it because I mean you could just be two girls who like hemp and have a cute niece you’re babysitting. So either like kiss in public every five minutes (with tongue) or don’t get upset when I fail to catch on. But hey it’s me. So you know there’s a catch. I want to be able to say sodomite, or any other word I want without it being called hate speech. Basically what I’m saying is that people should be able to do what they want so long as they can. People gay marrying each other is going to offend some people and me saying certain words is bound to offend other people. But trying to say that one is a human right and calling the other one hate speech is hypocritical. I’m not saying that I’d hang around the gay wedding chapel arms flailing, wearing a sandwich board about hell while screaming about buggery and carpet munching. That wouldn’t express my views accurately and I’ve frankly got many better uses for my time. If those are your views, and that is the best use of your time then I pray all your children are gay and your genes perish from this earth without a trace. The closing thought for the day is that it’s foolish and (without crazy corpse stacking levels of mechanized murder) impossible to change a people’s world view and opinions. It’s hard enough to regulate what people do, much less think and say. So why not just let people say what they want. -Cigarettes 1:05 AM
So yeah. Happy Groundhog Day, everybody. Okay, serious reply time, though. You've fallen into a huge gap here, Cigs. You say you want people to be able to do whatever they want so long as they can. Guess what? You can. There's no law against "hate speech" so far as I know, except as a sentencing consideration. Nobody can lock you up or fine you for saying that word. You're saying you want to say a word without somebody calling you hateful for saying it, and then you're saying you want people to do whatever they want so long as they accept the consequences. Guess what? The consequence of saying "sodomite" is that some people are going to accuse you of hate speech. If you're unwilling to accept the consequences of your own actions, how can you expect others to accept the consequences of theirs? -Sideburns 11:50 PM
What I'm really getting at are things like FCC regulations on words you can and can't say in print, radio or television and statues that purport to divine the intentions of the accused and punish them more if their intentions are "hate" based. These of course are simply society acting out the hypocritical notion that it's your right to offend some communities in both word and deed but not others. If I wanted to hang a picture like this I'm going to quote someone who had an offensive opinion in her day. Rosa Luxemburg once said "Freedom is the opinion of the dissenters." That means that progress for gay people isn't really freedom unless people retain the right to oppose that progress. Society has a strong tendency to brow beat certain minorities for being ignorant and old fashioned. I'm not saying that people aren't being ignorant and counter productive by opposing gay marriage or supporting don't ask don't tell because in my view they are making things worse. I just want to stand up for people peoples rights to be offensive, ignorant, hateful and god forfuckingbid discriminatory. There isn't any legal benefit to regulating the marriage of gay people or the opinions of ignorant people. So why do we attempt to silence one group and not the other? Because people on both sides are being stupid! One side clings to the past and misunderstands scripture. The other side is just being hypocritical. -Cigarettes |
It wasn't the creepy late night phone calls, you saying "Hi" and then breathing really hard until I couldn't take it anymore and hung up. It wasn't the way you stared at me through the bathroom window from behind the fence at the back of my yard. It wasn't the way that every other Thursday morning, without fail, I'd go out to my driveway to get the paper only to find my trash can emptied, the bag slit open, each used Q-tip carefully removed and placed on the ground with its peers to spell out "I LOVE YOU." It wasn't even the cryptic letters you sent, well, they weren't really letters at all, were they? They were hair. Your hair. In an envelope. And you asked for mine in return. But you didn't leave a return address, stalker, so I couldn't very well send it to you. No, it was when you finally worked up the courage to come up to me in the parking lot, you didn't even have the social grace to pull your hand out of your pants. Devotion is a virtue, but rudeness I cannot abide. |
(C) 2010 Sideburns and Cigarettes
Recovered from locker #474-B. Photographic evidence of subject provided and retained.
When I play hopscotch I play to win. I am hopscotchest. My aggressive style of hopscotch was passed down to me by the legendary Congolese hopscotch tribal elders after I rescued their children from a man-eating panther. But only with my primitive and brutal warrior spirit was I able to endure four years of bone grinding hopscotch training in the war-torn jungle. They treated me like an animal - and that’s what I became! When another kid rolls into town boasting of skill and speed to challenge the fastest hopscotch hopper in this hemisphere I make sure they look me in the eyes and see the beast. Most tuck tail and run, for all who see me know when it comes time for me to have a match that only one man is going to hop away with his life. When I hop out onto the squares there isn’t anything I won’t do for victory. My preternatural ability to jump exactly onto a square, with the correct foot, in the right sequence, without touching the lines comes from the burning rage inside me. That same beast like fury drives me to humiliate my hopscotch enemies before I destroy them utterly. If they are a worthy foe I will hopscotch them until they are incapacitated with shame, exhaustion and tears. Then they are sacrificed on the dark onyx alter at midnight while I howl out the names of the 14 hopscotch gods. Their blood waters my dark garden and I consume their hearts to add to my strength.
So you've all read all of Cigs' articles. If you haven't, do so now. I'll be here when you get back. Okay, now that you know that Cigs is a mild sociopath and what a casual observer might call a bit of an asshole, I can burst your bubble. He may be the more outwardly negative of the two of us, but if you could look inside my head, you'd learn motherfucker ain't got shit on me.
