By the time this is published I will have passed the six-month mark in my “Just Get High on Life” experiment, which was first strongly recommended to me by some very concerned members of the medical community early last September. I had quit the mood-altering drugs tobacco and alcohol cold turkey two days before winding up in the emergency room on the verge of a heart attack. Then followed a five-day hospital stay and a couple more in the following months, during which I was assured I would get over my life-long aversion to needles through an enforced intimate relationship with them. Well, the doctors were 100% wrong on that one; I was a sort of human pincushion for about two months early on and seem to have been getting well-stuck every couple of weeks since then and the mere sight of a needle still makes me want to scream, cry, and run for my mommy. Now, when one realizes that my mother left this earth in 1973, it becomes clear that I’m as much of a basket case without drugs as I was with them. Truly clean for the first time since around October of 1968, I’ll honestly say that cold turkey isn’t a lot of fun after six months, but the alternative would most assuredly be deadly at this point in time. I’m quite aware of being more or less constantly en pointe now, sniffing for opportunities with a scent of excitement in a conscious attempt to bring back or enhance the old joie de vajayjay, which had long been among my dearest companions. Thanks for asking.
Now I’d like to enshrine two recent quotations from noted celebrities into the Hose Hall of Fame. They are both from last month, yet are as eternal as any can possibly be when it comes to exposing the explosive arrogance imbued in filthy-rich, famous freaks.
The first comes from that radio comedy show hosted by Sean Hannity. I assume the commercials he occasionally reads live, however, are straightforward and non-comedic in intent. One day he was doing one for a nationwide telephone-order florist service:
And I’ll tell you, these roses literally stay fresh seemingly forever!
Thanks, Sean. Yeah, it sure sounded good in its pomposity, didn’t it? But a lot of your audience isn’t as dumb as you suppose. It is my fervent wish that you take a printed version of those words and literally stuff them up your backside whence they seemingly came. And do keep your bathroom breaks private in the future, you deluded pig.
Next we come to Lady Gaga, whose artistic output and evocative body I have at times admired. It does upset me, however, to think that she’s probably the latest celebrity to indulge heartily in the time-honored tradition of drinking her own bathwater. Herewith a message to her fans:
Let me be for you the Goddess that I know I truly am.
I’ll tell you: These rich gut piles! Collect outrageous sums from millions who nearly worship your bodily vapors and suddenly you start acting like you’re famous or something! And like you’re more than human! And, oh god, I wanna be like you so much it hurts and uh, I mean uh… like, I… oh, man. Oops.
Oh, I see by my watch it’s time again to check up on the current currency rate of the word cool in American society:
Higher than ever and continuously rising. Current indoctrination level approaching 92%, up from 84% one year ago at this time.
The latest group of words that seem to have been overtaken and slaughtered by cool to the point of near-extinction include enviable, concupiscent, and splendid, with valiant stalwarts nice and delightful each gearing up for some major battles, which are predicted to begin around early summer. The U.N. is, as usual, non-committal — a stance that one hardened fellow rebel denounced as “uncool” before falling on his own sword in shame.
I recently paid visit to a friend of mine who is a business owner as well as a longtime coolie (uses cool 90 – 400 times a day as his/her only positive adjective, the result of an insidious program of cultural indoctrination and conspiracy). So, when the third or fourth word out of my friend’s mouth was the c-word, I, as usual, could not stop myself from cringing — a personal fault that I am deeply ashamed of, believe me, and have been trying more than ever to control. After my first cringe is obviously noted — usually with “oh crap, sorry, Hose” (I deeply do not want them to be sorry but I wish I could play them tapes of themselves talking just ten or so years ago before the culture had gutted their vocabulary for the sake of this Hitleresque upstart cool!) I can pretty much remain normal in reaction to subsequent iterations — passive and cringeless.
And, so I was this day, while my friend became strangely more and more aware each time the word passed his/her lips! There would be a sudden silence, maybe an “oh, God” quickly sighed before he/she continued. (Forgive me for this he/she business but this is a true story and I wish to grant my friend some measure of anonymity and I refuse to take part in the popular but idiotic their/them form when dealing with a single person. So bite me.) Our conversation went on for about ten minutes, the pauses after saying that word from my friend were relentless and embarrassing to both of us (I thought). Then it happened: my friend, red-faced, exploded out of the chair and hurried toward me, saying quite loudly, “Okay, that’s enough from you! (?) You’re going to have to leave right now; I’ve had all I can take from you, and I was just trying to relax, and you come in here, and… all this… Please leave now!” and I’m sure I would have been physically pushed were I not two or three steps ahead of my (longtime/onetime?) friend on the way to the front door. I offered some sincere “forgive me”s during my retreat, but I’m sure they went unnoticed, so intense was the unexpected wrath they had attempted to assuage.
That one’s presence can be so upsetting should give one pause.
There. I have paused. But the brainwashing continues. (Full disclosure — although I personally had nothing to do with it — check out the back cover of this very paper’s edition of two months ago…)
And, oh, dear me, just witness how those instigators or their zombies have recently increased their grip on the nation’s capital! Just opened at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. last month: an exhibit called “American Cool”! Huge portraits honoring the 100 people, dead and alive, chosen by some really cool jury as the coolest our cool country has thus far produced… with a huge cool plaque bearing the names of the 100 cool runners up — those unfortunates who just weren’t cool enough for this school, baby. For me, it’ll always be the most abominable of words; a cancerous virus set loose in our vocabulary; a word I wish could be printed just one more time among a random second batch and then sent off to Sean Hannity with a request to do that cool trick again for his millions of fans.