Fuck That, I (2000)
Today I walked to the University.
It felt good. I haven't walked for a while. I used to walk all the time. My mother
and my aunts would complain about how I eat so much and stay so skinny and I'd
be like "Follow me around for a day." Yeh, I've been driving around
the last little while. I'm done school now, done university, and now I've got
two shitty part-time jobs. So I'm just driving around all the time going to work,
going home. Going to work, going home. Work. Home. Work home. Workhome. Workhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhomeworkhome.
Whoa. Fuck that. I'm so disconnected now that school's done. I don't know what's
up. If I hadn't taken that walk today and passed by that crappy newspaper box,
I wouldn't have known that whatshisnuts had won the political race down south.
I want to care. Not because I'm all rah-rah U.S.A.! like some fucked up Canadian
and like most blamelessly naïve eastern Europeans, but because it's just
stupid not to know about what's up in the world. You think the average European
is aggressively ignorant of the political situation of his or her neighbouring
country? I don't. I think it's just lazy consumerist nonsense to be all like "I
hate politics. They're all the same anyway." Which is ironic because I hate
politics. Except that for me, they're all the same because I don't know shit about
any of them. And politics ruins a good bourbon.
So I'm walking to the U, and I see this older lady carrying a heavy backpack
by the top straps in one hand. She's going the same way I am, so I offer to help
her. Surprisingly, she accepts. So I walk with her to the train. She chats about
the routine shit that old people chat about. You know, shit's that just so quotidian
that we overlook it. It's not stupid. I mean, breathing isn't stupid, right? I
guess talking about breathing is stupid. Anyway, I'm all into it, and then she
gives me the donut the chick at the Timmie's gave her. She's on a diet. Nice.
Free food. I never turn down free food. Anyway, it was the perfect scene. A nice
guy offering a nice old lady some nice help, and she nicely accepts. Nice. Why
can't people just help, and be helped? Fuck that.
I go to my shitty job in the evening. The retail one. It's in the middle of
this total wasteland. This block of land so flat it makes the rest of the prairies
look buxom, and the wind just howls across it. Just fuckin' screams. It's wild.
Several city blocks square of only plastic just-add-water retail megastores. A
whole goddamn neighbourhood. Of stores. Fuck that. There's even streets that run
between them. Stop signs, turning lanes. Little elms. I'm "neighbours"
with a hardware store, a clothing store, an office supply store, a discount everything
warehouse, blah blah blah. It's sick. Cute. American department stores with fast
food joints and banks inside them. What the fuck? The whole area is a trippy sci-fi
landscape. The sky looms over you like a huge alien ship, the horizons at your
sides stretching down and away, so flat they make an angle of more than 180 degrees
over your head. It's a huge vast, infinite dome, dyed a deep navy, looking like
you're underneath a huge toilet plunger that's descending to flush away all the
built up filthy retail crud. And the lights on the bare surface of the ground's
plane eerily light up a thin layer of haze, like an angora sweater. Mohair. Mohair
retail leggoland. Mo' retail. Can we get mo' retail than this? I don't tink so.
I go for my crappy half-hour "break" fifteen minutes late cuz I was
too busy goofing off with co-workers to notice the time. I forgot my "lunch"
at home, so I hoof it across a vacant lot of long brown grass, dirt, and snow
where they're gonna sprout up another get-your-smile-outta-my-face suck-the-life-outta-chump-teenagers
retail generator like trailer parks pop out grubby violent urchins. I go to the
ff joint/department store/bank/trash magnet, get some crappy food. I hate the
very idea, but the food goes down so easy. All the cardboard and hooves and oil
and salt and sugar and rubber and sawdust. Slides down like bourbon. Why the hell
are these ff joints even here? For lazy burned out parents and neighbour retail
employees. Without the business of retail employees on their breaks, these places
would sink. It's stupid. It's like the "Marylin Mansen Special" at Ron's
subs next to the stadium on the day of the concert. A sub and a pop for $5. That
is soooo Mansen. Yeh. So the stupid paper placemat propaganda on my tray is all
about some lame high school athletic championship sponsored by the ff joint. "Check
the excitement. Check the energy. Check your pulse." HOLY SHIT IS THAT FUNNIEST
THING I'VE EVER READ. I wanna shake the hand of the guy who wrote that. That's
like fight club piss in the soup shit. Don't have the clams, Miss. The sad thing
is that if you're reading that, it's too late. Your pulse is gone.
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