The Question(s) of Vous

Hot girls are standing by. Homely girls need to pick up the slack, yes?

Who’s the buttmunch who started the first email chain, ‘cause those gonads need the kiss of a foot. Jesus either loves me or he’s casting me into eternal damnation. And yes, I am fully aware that I might die today in one of a million variations of random suffering. Thanks for reminding.

Why do women pretend they don’t need sex? If men didn’t need it we wouldn’t put up with the aggravation of not getting it. We’d be scrap booking or some such. And we’re not referring to random, hot, messy, supermodel sex. Run of the mill, after-the-teeth-are-brushed and is-the-alarm-set sex is acceptable.

When you really want to get somewhere on the road you’re going to get stuck in a knot of stupid people. You know this, but you fuss anyway. My question is, Shut the hell up and drive, Ok? Go around them. Tailgating a stupid person is kind of a Forrest Gump maneuver. Stupid is as stupid…

Why will people wait several minutes for an elevator in order to go down one flight of stairs? No, the stairway doors aren’t locked. There’s a special place in hell for these people: right next to me. I poke them in the eye repeatedly wondering why the light won’t light up.

You’re at work. You’ve held onto that stack of papers to make you look busy long enough that it’s turning yellow. You toss it and prepare to create a new one. Right then either the phone will ring with real work or a coworker will show up with some inane question related to doing work. Why does God hate you so?!

You’ve read that email of George Carlin material one too many times. You delete it and try coming up with pithy observations yourself. You hurt yourself. By the time you get home you realize you’re not likely to come up with anything nearly so witty and spot-on as an electric riff of George Carlin zingers. Instead you watch ‘Dancing With The Stars’ in quiet suicide. Wife or husband comes in, asks how was your day, you say you answered some emails, puttered around… The weight of the universe crushes you. "Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." Why couldn’t you have come up with that, you lazy, slovenly bastard? But that’s not the question. The question is how many of the seven words you can never say on TV are now said on TV by old people over an annoying laughtrack?

Have you said the word “tits” today?

Not to get too existential, but if you knew you’d have to repeat your old life again after death, would most of us really pine for an afterlife? I imagine the Pope would have to have a fire sale just to afford more pointy hats. And that’s our true subject. Money. If we view money objectively we come to one startling conclusion: it rocks!

It rocks hard.

Doesn’t matter the currency or country, money is the woman slowly applying thick red lipstick to her pouty lips while we shiver with anticipation tied to the chair.

Not the pursuit of money, which can be laughably ridiculous, but the concept of money, which completely boggles the mind. There’s a reason it’s a religious institution. Money either elevates out of the ether into the real world, or it negates----and thus you entirely, you bumbling, penniless wretch----into a land of perpetual, silent desperation. Money’s about possibilities, and isn’t that God’s thing?

Questions, questions, questions.

Let me and the wife miss two paychecks and the family’s on the street. Welcome the hell to America. Yet, I could have won $5,000 dollars recently. Granted the lottery is an idiotic, inherently rigged machine same as any casino but on occasion we throw prudence to the wind and hope our hunch becomes the butterfly’s wings that launch sweet prosperity our way. Like I did recently. Only I should have chosen better. See, my birthday fell. That’s how you talk about the lottery. Things fall. From heaven. Would have been $5,000 dollars from one dollar had I played it, but I didn’t play it. I played a different number. Just because. But since my birthday’s coming up, I’ve been meaning to pull a couple bucks out of my wallet and kiss them to god on that number. But I didn’t. That day. Which sucks.

So money has power.

Bloody hell.

Money states clearly: I control. I determine. So what if it was dreamt up by Man? It has outgrown Man’s capacity to control it. Why worry about the robot revolution when the ducket revolution goes on? If you think evolution follows no moral imperative, just watch a utility company. A gas company can shut off a family’s supply in the winter if they fall behind in their bills. In the summer that company will have merged with an electric company. Nationwide quite a few seniors will die. The tragedy will be covered in the news, but they will not cover money, not in any real sense. Money can be self-deprecating and will even allow itself a perfunctory probe or critique, but if poked sharply in the ribs prepare your ass for mauling. Stephen Colbert may say bears are the number one threat to humankind, but imagine a big-ass bear with money.

It will do things to you that should not be done.

The song ‘For The Love of Money’ by the O’Jays is one of the most pointed cultural observations of all time. Given enough money there’s a very good chance that very few people would ever see me again. No malice. More like travel. Family should miss us more than they do, no? I’d be in Paris because I wanted to see naked statues next to bus stops; hit the Shinto hinterlands of Japan to get chased by people with real swords; stroll Loch Ness with a shirt saying ‘Nessie Tastes Gud’; find the deepest Mississippi-delta Klan enclave and offer everybody coupons to a huge White Sale (accompanied by trained Pit Bull sharpshooters---of damn course---if you’ve got enough money you should be able to train vicious dogs to shoot high caliber rifles); take my Ma to see a concert in Australia. Why? Because my Ma, who’s been on this earth for over 70 years, has never been to Australia. She’s raised 6 kids, buried 2 and a husband, calmed storms and walked on water when she had to…but she’s never been to Australia. There are people flying to Australia right now who haven’t done a hundredth of my Ma’s work. Ma’s going to travel.

If I had enough money every member of my family would become a philanthropist. If I’m going to set somebody up for life they’d damn well better learn to slice some pie. Me and the wife would have the time and resources to turn our lax bodies into machines of high performance circus lovin’. My sisters-in-law could flash me all they want and it wouldn’t matter because I’d have been to the Hollywood Starlet Nude Beach, lived to tell the tale, and emerged nigh unto a god. My indifference would be legendary.

Please know that my 58% employable prowess comes firmly attached to modest wages and a gaping hole in the sky where manna rains except on me, so $5,000 is very significant. It would have gotten me laid. Big time. The Wife is nowhere near materialistic but even she can’t deny the genetic code of the Big Beefy Leg. A man drops a huge honking furry Mastodon thigh at the mouth of the cave. The woman, overcome with Better-Him-Than-Me syndrome picturing the hunt, happily gives up the Neanderthal draws because what’s a few minutes sacrifice? Ah, wistful, circus love: one day you will be mine. Full-fledged Cirque du Soleil.

But I didn’t heed that niggling question of serendipity. No joy for me. No additional monies. Can somebody please take up a collection and get this poor boy a laptop? (Much like a sword, a laptop given is much better than one bought.) I can practically taste those winnings. They would have been slightly crunchy with a hint of cinnamon. I’d have set my head on them like a soft cushion and praised their downy comfort. I’d have bought myself a nice 3-feet model of the starship Enterprise. A geek with $5,000 kinda makes you wanna treat him with a little more respect. Pig Pen had it right. Most of all I would have quite awesomely and very simply won $5,000. How often does something like that happen during your day, Readers Number One, Two and Three? I’d wager (to carry the metaphor) not very. So as I say damn and pretend it didn’t mean that much, let me glimpse that alternate reality me, the one grinning ear to ear after being sexed out of his gourd grasping the winning ticket. Let me see that lucky bastard’s face and ask him point blank how he knew to heed the signs when to me all they were were curious, random questions. Certain things are just unexplainable till somebody points them out point blank.


Which, generally speaking, is how we get the answer to the question of vous.