Snausage Snoup

My friend received his sentence today; his long-awaited judgement, the thing that he has simultaneously dreaded and painstakingly created. He went to the supposed Mecca of civilization, the place where he could be free, and he now finds himself dragged into legal proceedings that will make him more a slave than he ever was.

I reviewed the Webby Awards page and I saw two people who I have worked with and personally know. I know four people who have been recognized for their work, either by winning or being nominated. I also know a lot of airbags and a couple of geniuses who have never even been allowed into the ceremonies. I couldn't help but cringe at the crap I'm producing now.

It struck me last week that in seven years, I had never heard my daughter cry. She has suffered more than anyone I know, yet she does not cry. I thought about it, told friends about it, pondered it and went to sleep that night. The next day, coming down the steps, she stumbled. She looked at me and exploded in the most anguished cries I have ever heard. The storm lasted no more than a minute, and then the sun re-emerged and she quite happily continued her journey. Her strength spreads deserved shame among the masses.

Last night I had a dinner party for my niece's 26th birthday. The whole family descended on my pesto and ate and drank their way through my meager savings like locusts. As they left, my wife and I stood at the door, dressed in barrels, waving goodbye clutching the dried brittle stems of the grapes of wrath. I had a rotten hangover this morning and had to miss work which further depleted the totally GDP.

A former colleague who nobody could stand is sliding down the tubes to the roaring cheers of the crowd. My wife and I check into his blog almost nightly to see how much farther he has slid. Once a powerful art director with a noteworthy hairdo, the blog chronicles his descent into odd jobs such as retail clerk and security guard. This amuses a second colleague (see paragraph 1) who once spearheaded the campaign of detest against the first. I've never understood why everybody hates the first guy, but I read the blog nonetheless and laugh too.

There's a certain point at which you give up any hope of doing anything cool or memorable in this world and you merely go for the fetid gold. A friend of mine called this epiphany and the ensuing money grab Operation Greed. I have embarked on this op myself and I assure you, it's no place for pussies. The irony is that the people whose approval one may have most sought, i.e. those revolting cocks who call themselves your family, do double spurging backflips because you're pulling down respectable bank. They couldn't give a shit if you've won a Webby or not, just show them the Benjamins; with some of them rank Lincolns will do. All the artistic triumphs you hoard in your little jewel encrusted memory box can be set out with the recycling along with the beer can house sized allotment of empties, because in this world, it's money that matters.

My wife is an artist of ill repute. She paints and sculpts scenes from her mind, in other words, tableaux of chaos and strange beauty. These pieces she gives away to strangers while the walls of our house are as bare as the Gobi desert. Strangers of like mind send her art which she discards or stores in drawers. The drawers in our house cannot be opened because they're filled beyond capacity with crap that even Fred Sanford wouldn't want. The drawers in our house are as worthless as knobs on walls.

It's been recently reported that according to White House sources, I am considered obese. I don't look obese, my clothes aren't grossly oversized, I am clearly smaller than most of my coworkers, including the pretzel guy and all the neighbors except for Tareyton, the white trash lady with emphysema that lives across the street. It's obvious that the charts are from another era when people were scrawnier. Post-depression era charts that do not account for the ruddy physique of the 21st century man. I went to a Web site for diabetes and filled in a few simple questions and clicked a button and the whole page flashed red and warned that I was at high risk for diabetes. I am going to die, thank god, but maybe I should lose a few pounds first with no admission that I am obese, though naked, admittedly, I'm not as compelling as I was 20 years ago.

My cat is jealous of my daughter. My daughter calls the cat Puppy, which doesn't help matters. It's all my fault, like everything else.

Later I will tell you about the Chinese woman who thought I was her doctor and chased me with guns. Actually I think I'll do a whole gun evening, because there's also the guy who thought I had harmed his Afghan and menaced me with a German Luger, and the guy who told me that he was going to shoot me but changed his mind, plus the one time a famous rock star pretended he had a gun and saved me from an ass kicking by a crazy Italian whose knickers were in a twist because I thought with my dick.