Posted on myspace with the bulletin title "Masturbating In Public" to 169 friends and strangers...

Longtime readers know I enjoy walking. Long distances, to me, range from 6-10 miles. I am a smoker, after all, so no Gumpian cross country epic journeys for me, just the little jaunts I weakly consider grueling.

I haven't had a decent walk since last summer. So, I got myself kickstarted earlier this evening. Since my place of employment recently relocated, I now have a new network of sidewalk capillaries to traverse.

I've been feeling down and out lately, and as I've learned over the past several years, my two best remedies for depression are reading and walking. I've been back on the book bandwagon for a month now, closing the final page on about ten books since my eyes got seesawing over letters again. That wasn't doing me well enough, which leads back to this entry's first line: I enjoy walking, and I'm at it again.

I had something of a lazy day at work, reading other folks' blogs, playing online Scrabble, leering at photos of swimsuit models, that sort of thing. As my feet clapped concrete and the white fluffy clouds moped across the blue above, I got down to brainstorming introspection and silent catharsis.

It wasn't working.

I remained grumpy, unsettled disgruntlement mingling with an urgent horniness stewing inside because it's been so long since I got laid. I mean, a long time. My brain played ping pong with two repeating thoughts: "I hate everything, especially me" and "that picture of the model bending over washing a Corvette with her panties all wet and soapy was pretty damn sweet."

Can you guess which thought won out?

I'm generally well behaved, sometimes too much so, to the point of parochial restraint. Not today. I found a path veering off the sidewalk, leading into a golf course. The path looped throughout the 18 holes, sometimes crossing residential streets, sometimes weaving through shitty little patches of forest.

As I passed the first copse of trees, the image of the supermodel began to take control of my brain. Nasty, dirty, thoughts. Oh yes. I began to harden.

Twenty minutes later, by the time I reached the second swathe of trees, the throb was impossible to subdue with any self-imposed discipline, with any tricks of mental redirection. Although I considered it to be pervish and uncivilized, my hormones could not be ignored. I decided I would masturbate on that golf course.

In that second lonely orphanage of trees, one tree's trunk split into three at ground level, the three massive stalks rising diagonally away from the ground center. I unzipped my pants, peered stealthily through the shrubbery at the seventh hole, and seeing no golfers present, began my frantic fondle session.

It was exciting. Aside from the usual sensations, there was the danger of getting caught and the thrill of doing something WRONG. A couple minutes in, I added some spit to my palm, finished myself off, and sighed. The orgasm wasn't spectacular, but the ejaculate certainly was. I came a lot. I mean A LOT.

I got myself zipped up and scampered back to the paved trail just before the four pastel cyclists came around the bend. 10:12 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Are any of these moping droop-shouldered state employees real people?

In today’s installment of fact or fiction, I will infiltrate the local DMV complex and put this myth to the test. Common knowledge holds that state employees, particularly in Chicago and the surrounding environs, are all connected people who landed their employment via family connections. That’s right, graft and corruption.

Yes, nepotism! Uncle Richie works for the Secretary Of State? Then it follows that Richie’s felon nephew and whore ex-wife inevitably got hooked up, and now work in the menial service jobs, enjoying the state’s inflated salaries and spectacular benefits. Despite this good fortune, they don’t think they should have to work AT ALL for living, and the resentment leads to them treating their citizen customers like sidewalk chewing gum. The Department Of Motor Vehicles is full of lazy disgruntled scumfucks, dirty ugly people that wield their meager authority with the grace and precision of a spastic with a sledgehammer.

That’s not the myth, that’s just accepted and tolerated fact. The myth, the urban legend, the dark secret lurking beneath, is this: these are not the inbred relatives of higher up state employees, but instead, robots. Automatons. Machines programmed to treat us with scorn and disdain.

I arrived early in the afternoon at the Schaumburg location next to the record store. My driver’s license and plate stickers have been expired for eighteen days now. Until my mission was completed, I was risking $75 tickets and being hauled out of my car and detained in jail by lock-jawed state troopers.

I walked up to the counter.

“I need to renew my license, my state ID, and get a new license plate sticker.”

“Sticker first. Take this number. Sit there.”

He pointed. At no time did any semblance of human emotion steal across his face. No gleam of humanity glimmered upon the surface of his eyes. No inflection colored his voice. Dead monotone. I forgot to check if his eyelids blinked or fluttered, but I doubt they did. Score one point for the cyborg theory.

I sat in my assigned section and waited for fifteen minutes. When my number was called, I strode to the counter and spoke.

“I need to renew my sticker.”

“License plate number?”

I gave it. My phone rang. I took the call. It was a coworker requesting information. Extensive information. I began to relay it to him. The teller scolded me.

“You tell him you’ll call him back. You’re in a state office. Understand?”

She tilted her head down so she could stare at me over the top of her bifocals. Her eyes said the rest. Allow me to speak for her eyes.

“Impertinent, disrespectful, self-important, inconsiderate, horrible little bastard. Who do you think you are? You’re in my zone now. You play by my rules or I’ll grind you into meal. Don’t fuck with me, kiddo. I chew up and spit out members of younger generations, and I’m not gonna stop now. Just give me an excuse. One excuse. I’ll make you regret being born.”

I spoke into my cell. “I’ll call you back in a sec. I’m at the DMV.”

She looked unsatisfied, sighed, then quoted me the price. “Seventy-eight.” She did not say dollars, or bucks, or dineros, or smackeroos, or cheese, or please. Just “seventy-eight.” I appreciate word economy. Result: Subtract one point from the cyborg theory. She was real. I’m pretty sure.

Next up was my driver's license renewal. A spherical woman with short hair and stubby legs encased in tight leggings straddled a chair at the busiest counter.

"Can I keep the expired licenses?"

"No, state law, we throw 'em out. Why do you want it?"

"It's the only picture of myself with long hair that I've got."

"I'll chop the picture off. Rest has to be mulched."

"Mulched. Right. Biodegradable. I'm an organ donor, by the way. I heard on the radio that I need to re-register for that. Exclude the liver, though. That would be cruel."

"All or nothing, sweetie."

"That's fine then. I pity the poor sap who tries to function with my soaked liver transplanted into his fragile gut cavity. Pancreas is pretty good, though."

"You're funny." She wasn't laughing. "Step over to the cashier, please."

Score one for the humans. Current tally: 2 for humans, 1 for robots.

The cash counter was helmed by a spindly crone with a twitch. A bug in her software?

"That'll be thirty dollars."

I heard gears grinding. Was it just natural human creakiness, a byproduct of arid menopause, or something mechanical, an ungreased clockwork on its shuddering march to an inevitable halt? Were robots cheaper to replace than repair? Was she an ancient prototype, and her overlords were extracting every last jerk of productivity from her rickety frame? I heard a click. Something was failing. Definitely a robot.

I went over to the photo check-in. It was time to have new pictures taken, photos I'd be stuck with for another four years. I had not shaved or had a recent haircut. I was bedraggled. Perfect.

Imagine a very fat man sitting at a counter in front of a computer terminal. Imagine the lip of the counter presses into his stomach horizontally right across the belly button, causing his lardy gut to squeeze out both above and below the counter. He was locked to it, Tetris tight. That was him. His face was pitted and cruel. His elbows rested upon the gut portion spilling out atop the counter. His fat stubby fingers frequently pressed several letters at once, requiring him to backspace and retype with his pinky, which was still almost too big to press a single key. I could hear grease bubbles popping as he spoke, reddish orange burrito grease simmering in his esophagus.

"Where's the rest of the old card? I can't give you a new license without the rest of the old one."

I reluctantly withdrew the long hair piece of license that the spherical woman had clipped for me. I handed it over to him.

"Who did this? One of the ladies over there? It's against state law. Which one?"

I dropped eye contact and stared at his gut, which shook like jello when he spoke. I remained silent. I would not sell out the few remaining humans to a cyborg fat fuck like this guy.

"Go siddown and wait for your name to be called." I heard the sound of air hissing from a tiny hole in a tire, then I smelled milk fart. His robot pudding body had farted quietly, threatening carbon monoxide detectors throughout the facility. I backed away slowly and sat in the waiting area. Despite the biological evidence, I decided Billy Buttcake was a robot, too.

Among those I dealt with, I believe 3 to be born of factories and two born from vaginas.

We are in danger. If this experiment works to the state's satisfaction, policemen will be next. 1:29 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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For a guy who whines about the difficulties inherent in containing the burgeoning chaotic madness that is nightlife partygoing, I actually like parties, at least, I do after seven or eight drinks.

Yes, I've been attending massive nocturnal barn-burning drug-fueled semi-psychotic social gatherings set to ear pulverizing repetetive "music" for over ten years now. For some masochistic reason I get a kick out of staying awake for 36 hours, spending several hundred dollars on recently engineered feats of chemistry that the government will outlaw as soon as they learn of them, and sharing freeform Babel-speak psuedo-conversations with the people who are both not dancing and capable of speech.

This isn't coming out right. So I worked the door at a party in downtown Chicago last weekend. From 3am-10am on Sunday morning, I watched the heart of the city transform from...

I'm never going to finish this entry, so I'm just squeezing it from my brainanus to get it off my conscience.

What I was gonna get into was that I worked door/security at an afterhours party from 3am-10am about two weekends ago. I got to watch the city wake. It was awesome. I ate fresh hot stuffed pizza at 6am at Madison & Wabash. I started drinking St Pauli Girl at 7:30 am. Dawn, that fucking sunrise. Wow. Words have failed me. So here's the abortion of a post that strangled itself to death with its own umbilicus.

I'll have a finished entry called Amputated Soul tomorrow, and maybe more TV bastard, too. 10:25 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Cast:
Lon – Company president, kind of a doofus - 50-ish
Rita – Field labor scheduling, manic depressive, somewhat whorish – early 20s
Jake – Hotshot TV producer, dresses like a star, looks like Jake Busey, wears too much cologne – early 30s
Steve – Parts & inventory, curmudgeonly, grumpy, sarcastic, somewhat handsome, smokes too much - late 20s
Christine – Wife of the president, does all the finance, major alcoholic, cheerful - early 40s
Jimmy - Project manager, son of the president, ex-jock, gets angry easily - late 20s
Others at the conference table – undefined at this point


[Season 1, Episode 1, Scene 2 – Setting: In the Vibrant, Inc. conference room, at an oval table, ten chairs are filled. The camera crew has arrived, and they’ve already set up tripods with cameras. Accessory cameramen with handheld steadicams are also filming, panning over the self-conscious employees. Lon, the company president, sits at the head of the table and begins the meeting.]

Lon: Are we all here?

Vibrant employees: A jilted chorus of enthusiastic confirmations and a few mumbled “I guess” answers.

Lon: Though you’ve all heard about this from one another, let’s go ahead and formalize this with an introduction. These men with the cameras are from Scorpion Entertainment. Rita heard about their tryouts on the radio and came to me. We decided to invite them here to check us out. They make reality shows. Jake, care to add to that?

Jake. Hi everybody. I’m Jake Ryman. I’m the leader of this motley gang. As Lon mentioned, we’re filming today at several small companies in the Chicago area. Scorpion’s goal with this particular reality show is this: We want to capture the reality of white collar office life. We want to show the workers as they actually are. This means showing the petty grudges, the stress, the eccentricities, the hiring and firings, the sudden deadlines, the big sale, the crushing defeat, all that stuff. We’re checking out about ten companies today, and we’re gonna pick one or two, depending on what we find. How does that sound?

Rita: What’s it gonna take to get you to pick us? (She smiles flirtatiously)

Jake: Instinct. Pure instinct. If you guys are dynamic and exciting, it’ll be you. Today we’re just gonna eavesdrop, spy around a bit. Maybe you can tell us where the best action is happening, Rita. (Jake smiles and gives her his sexy stare.)

Steve: Suppose somebody ain’t a team player. Suppose this guy thinks this is ridiculous and wants no part of it. Would that put the kibosh on this company’s chances altogether?

(Everybody in the room glares at Steve, imploring him the shut his trap)

Jake: It might kill your company’s chances, yeah. I imagine this guy must be you. Not a TV fan, I take it? That’s cool, I understand. But hey, I’ll play your game. Suppose this person exists, and took that stance, and we decided to film here at Vibrant anyways. First of all, we wouldn’t be able to use any footage of this guy, ‘cause he wouldn’t sign the waiver. His name couldn’t be spoken on air, either. We’d bleep it out, or… Better yet, we could have everybody in the company start calling him THAT GUY. Listen to it in your head. “When is THAT GUY getting here? He’s an hour late. THAT GUY fucked up the order, and now we have to spend eight hundred bucks sending technicians back to site XYZ. THAT GUY keeps farting in the cafeteria.” Has a nice ring to it, right? But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. If we pick Vibrant, we’ll cross that bridge then. You’ll come around. They all do.

Jimmy: Oooookay Steve, dude. Stop that. You’re punching holes in our boat already? Teamwork, man, teamwork.

Steve: Gang rape takes teamwork, too, Jimmy.

Jimmy: Stop! Please?

Steve: Right. So, uh… Jake, right? Jake. What shows have you inflicted upon the masses? Let’s hear your resume. And why small companies? What’s the angle there?

Jake: I did a lot of shows. How about the skydiving marriage proposal show? See that one? I also made the divorce show where people had to eat dog food and walk barefoot on glass to claim more of the split assets. I wanted to televise the executions of death row inmates, but there were too many legal obstacles. But the show that really made Scorpion a respected name in the reality field was the one about the ex-cons working in flower delivery.

Steve:…

Jake: Now, for the second part of your question. Larger companies and corporations don’t want to risk bad PR, and too many people are involved. With a small company like yours, it’s far simpler to get everybody on board, cross the T’s, dot the I’s, and get the show on the air without too many legal hoops to jump through.

Steve: Do you have any STDs?

Jake: Excuse me?

Steve: You know, sexually transmitted diseases. With all the gladhanding, buttfucking, and reacharounding you guys do in the process of lowering the collective intelligence of America and it’s culture, I figure you get pretty itchy down there.

Jake: I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Lon, can we excuse this guy?

Lon: Everybody at this table is an important and respected part of this company. I don’t want to shun anyone or cause a fracture in our morale. Steve, instead of making snide remarks, would you care to politely express your concerns?

Steve: Hmm. Yes. Yes I would. As you may have guessed, I can’t stand most television shows. Reality shows, in particular, I find to be degrading and sad. All sorts of people humiliate themselves on the air for a shot at fifteen minutes of fame. I like working for this company, and it would bother me a lot if we became water cooler fodder. We’re inviting these people to turn us into a punchline. I don’t like it. I don’t trust them.

Jake: I promise we won’t manipulate you. If you look bad on the show, it’ll be because you behaved poorly, not because we edited you or used misdirection to imply something. We don’t need to manufacture drama, it materializes out of thin air, like magic. This show will be magic, just like my other shows, and I guarantee we’ll get good ratings. Everything will be up front, no bullshit. You have my word.

Steve: I think I just shit my pants. 4:03 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I've been trying to write about a party last weekend. My first attempt turned into yet another scathing diatribe against clubgoers and nightlife. The second attempt reads like hokey schmaltz. Generally I'll let a piece wander where it wants, but I'd really like to get this one right, get it accurate.

So I'll come back to that. The TV bastard thing will get more attention soon, too.

In the meantime, I decided to post a bulletin on Myspace today. If you're not familiar with the place, it's a giant network of user profiles. I've rediscovered many long lost friends with it. Sometimes people post stupid bulletins, so I whipped up my own take on the chain letter bullshit that pervades the online atmosphere like farts in a Volkswagon. Here it is.

- - - - -

Pay attention, or I'll come to your house and brand you with white hot cookie cutters. The kind with Christmas patterns.

Do I have your attention? You don't want any festive new scars, do you?

Good. Here's the situation. It has been brought to my attention that if you fail to repost this bulletin within 1.37 seconds of reading it, the following will occur:

1. Cats will be born full grown, and all of them will be hideously ugly and suffer from lifelong halitosis. Severe halitosis. I'm talking leper diarrhea bad. Because they'll be born full grown, nobody will ever have a kitten again. No more kittens. Forever. Period.

2. Your soul mate, whether you have met this person or not, will have nightmares everytime he/she goes to sleep until he or she dies. The nightmares will look like home movies of you raping stuffed animals, toasters, tennis rackets, and felafel shop owners. Do not become an imaginary rapist. Repost this bulletin. If you fail, when you see your soul mate, that person will call the police. The charge: perverted psychological terrorism.

3. Anal prolapse. Your rectum will invert. Picture it. Every time you sit on the toilet , your dangling innards will be tickled by cold toilet water. This digestive prolapse will be a makeshift foreskin, an intestinal tail that waits for your emerging feces. You will be a disgusting freak and nobody will ever fuck you again.

4. Gangrene pimples. Not your everyday ordinary blackheads and whiteheads. No sir. This acne will be olive green, and it will cause your skin to slide right off, just like the skin on baked chicken. The flesh beneath will necrotize, turn purple and black, and birth maggots that squeal with delight. People will think zombies are back. Some gung-ho hillbilly will blast you in the face with a sawed off shotgun, mercifully ending your misery.

5. Your tastebuds will generate bile and everything you eat or drink will taste like schnapps vomit.

Take your hand out of your pants, I'm not finished.

You've all seen or read the horrible things that happen when you fail to follow the instructions told to you in Myspace bulletins.

All of them have come true so far, right? That's why you keep posting them, keeping the chain of idiocy intact, like a virtual Arms Across America project for subhuman genetic accidents.

So don't stop now. Repost this.

Remember, I have those cookie cutters and a propane torch in my trunk.

- - - - -

My profile, if you care: Steve 4:56 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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The other night I had an idea for a television show titled “I Hate Television.” It’s about a reluctant reality star. When approached to be a contestant or participant or whatever, he refuses and delivers a scathing tirade condemning reality programming and American culture in one fell swoop. He goes so far as to tell the paparazzi-like agents following him that their bosses, the execs, are “corpse-raping vulture filth,” and that the cameramen are "parasites gnawing on the skinlesss underbelly of a cancerous whale."

Naturally, this endears him to the television folks. They love him. Unfortunately for them, they can’t convince him to sign up, sell out, and join the club. They follow him, pester him, and entice him, all the while filming their stalking pursuit in the hopes of one day airing the footage.

They really want him on board because of the pure unabated bile he spews out. He’s hateful comedy gold. (Yes, I am basing this character on me. Shut up.) I’m trying out some dialogue for a few scattered scenes here and there. Up they will go on this very site, not necessarily in chronological order.

I’m gonna see how many episodes I can cram into the front half of the season, which builds up to our angry hero finally breaking down and offering the TV fucks this ultimatum:

“You want me on TV? Fine. But the only way I’m gonna join your filthy little reality cabal is as a host. A mean host, like the American Idol guy, but ten times the bastardism.”

Then the fun really begins.

[Season 1, Episode 1, Scene 1 - Setting: Office Building Hallway]

“The camera crews will be here at eleven.”

“The fuck you say.”

“No, really, I’m serious. The boss approved it and everything. We’re officially in the tryout stage. The show is about office drama, workplace politics, people under stress, stuff like that. They’re checking out small companies all over Chicago today. They’re taking demo footage, and then they’re gonna pick out one or two businesses and do reality shows about them. If we’re picked, we’ll be on for a whole season. So be on your most entertaining behavior.”

“Horseshit. Horseshit, I say. This is preposterous. I protest. Do you really wanna be the human equivalent of a chimpanzee at the zoo, locked in your cage all day, scratching your lopsided testicles and flinging your feces at weeping children with ice cream all over their shirts?”

“I’m not sure if you know this, Steve, but I don’t have testicles. I’m a girl. You know, a female?”

“Ha ha. My analogy still stands and will not wilt under heavy scrutiny. The comparison is horribly accurate. Reality television shows exploit the average American’s desperate desire to validate his existence by looking down upon some other schmo, while deep down inside he wishes it was him on the show. Secretely he pangs to see his own drooling mug beaming from primetime. I am unwilling to debase myself before the cruel altar of fleeting micro-fame. I will not strut around waving my cock at the camera. I will not put on airs of being Mr. Suburban Hot Shit 2006. I will not sashay suggestively about, preening and cooing like some horribly non-aware jackass, allowing obese ice cream slurping housewives to generate those feelings of superiority that swell up in their ugly cow brains like ballooning tumors every single day they sit there gobbling and watching. I will not be America’s Next Top Whipping Boy. I refuse to allow this corrosion of my dignity. I won't play. I will not be this week's example, reduced to my caricature, another kneejerk semi-human turd for every viewer at home to look down upon. Fuck this.”

“You need to lay off the coffee.”

“Energy drinks, actually. Nice and cold and fizzy for summertime. Also irrelevant. Whose idea was this? I must know.”

“Ummmm… mine.”

“Rita, shame on you. I’ll fart in your office later for this.”

6:17 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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My fifth column is up at Dirty Margarita. This time, strippers.

Did I tell you I titled the column to refer to a bucket of alcohol slop, remainders from the bottoms of glasses and bottles left unfinished? Pour it all together; serve it to the desperate ones. That stuff.

Did I also tell you I found a slang dictionary entry online that says a slush bucket is a fat girl's pussy? Isn't that awesome? 6:15 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Poems of the Revolutionary War

1.
King George sits across the pond,
Picking his voluminous nose.
We don’t need no stinkin’ King,
We’ve got land owners instead.

2.
Take that three point hat
And shove it up your hairy ass.
Your red coat may be red already,
But I’ll make it redder.

3.
I’m a mighty musket man, yes I am.
I’m gonna pellet pop you, you monarchist fuckpig.
Thrice you’ll be shot, and to the ground you’ll fall,
All British and hosing from little sprinkler holes.
(even though we haven’t invented sprinklers yet,
I’ll bet Benjamin has thought of them by now.)

4.
We named our thirteen starting with consonants,
Instead of vowels, like say, England or Ireland.
The Scots got it right,
You need a good strong beginning,
Like us trouncing your pathetic armies.
Then again, our nation is named America,
Which begins with an A,
But we’re gonna take hypocrisy to a whole new level,
So ignore the discrepancy,
And don’t fuck with us, you limey crumpet bunkers.

5.
We should’ve teabagged your mothers’ foreheads,
Instead of dumping it all in the harbor.

6:08 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I don't remember this at all.

10:23 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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