Great American Heroes: Official Correspondence

SUBJECT: Great American Heroes
DATE: June 28, 2007

No. I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God. George H.W. Bush

Dear Ralph,

I'm sitting here at a staff meeting pretending to take notes on issues that everyone knows don't concern me. Indeed. I am hardly even involved tangentially in this boorish conversation, and thank god for that.

I originally began this letter with some comments about New York-some lame and egotistical thing about tendrils invading your brain, severing the corpus callosum. Who knows what I was talking about, really? I would hate to waste your time with impotent ramblings or rehashed fantasies about fighting Humboldt squid armed only with a diver's knife. Not to mention the fact that my first three-sentence draft was typed on a computer. I recall our conversation a few months ago regarding postal correspondence, however, and in lieu of pounding this thing out on my 1928 Smith-Corona, I will do the next best thing and handwrite the fucker, perhaps only to satiate both of our thirsts for purity. Whatever that is. In many ways, you and I are stuck in a past that only partially existed. Our mutual affinity for the days of the Pony Express is mixed with similar longings to have been born in the 1960s or the Roaring Twenties when mirth and booze were the operative spiritual currencies. Today we deal in swill, and the spiritual economy is primed for a crash that will likely leave most of us gasping for air in the vacuum that is sure to follow.

Shit. A staff meeting is no time to be scribbling about human drought unless the individual in question is a true masochist, which I am not. I am a sadomasochist-an infinite believer in give-and-take as well as the theory that you can't appreciate pain without inflicting it. For more thoughts on this, I recommend a Japanese film called Ichi the Killer. Be careful with it, though. And make sure you are of sound mind when you watch. The five gallons of semen shown during the opening credits came from the production crew. It is 100% authentic. It is also the least disturbing part of the film.

Anyway. There are probably more than enough hipster doofuses in New York who could get their hands on a copy for you. They get off on pop culture evangelism. It is their masturbatory creed to spread retro hats and rabid love for Icelandic industrial music, especially if it means outfitting an army of city punks with fishnet stocking for the women and black bowler hats for the men. Who am I to talk, though? I recently removed my porkpie from the backseat of my car only to find its brim mangled and its crest irreparably wrinkled. The ensuing heartbreak I experienced effectively ruined the rest of my day, even moreso than when those sorority sluts ran off with the cobbler hat I bought in Dublin. So I suppose I will reserve my criticism of hat whores for now. It is one of my many vanities.

I really do apologize for getting off track here (or not having any sort of track at all). This meeting is now one hour and twenty minutes old. The palms of my hands are dry and burning, and I am forced to look up every few seconds to fend off any suspicions of non-involvement. Quite honestly, I suspect I have done a remarkably bad job of maintaining airs, and my expression of feigned interest probably looks so tepid as to be almost universally offensive. But I don't care. As of June 13, I have been in this office for two long and confusing years, and the only thing I have to show for it is a fat helping of brain calcification or necrosis. I'm not quite sure which, but it doesn't really matter. Are you prejudiced?

GODDAMN FILCHING RAPIST BASTARD!! I should be past this by now-stealing potent little nuggets from the Good Doctor. I'm a victim of the simulacra like everyone else, I suppose. Why am I surprised? My thoughts are fractured and stilted. I am starting to misspell (sp?) words, and the coffee is wearing off but quick. Just keep plugging away. Ride this meeting out without swallowing your tongue, and then it's smooth sailing for the rest of the day, away from the leery stares of co-workers who long ago wrote me off as a slacker and a Communist. Serves me right for submitting Marx and Lenin quotes to be printed on the weekly office calendar. I can't imagine that rubs the missionaries and nationalists too nicely. Thank Christ we live in a country where it is illegal to fire me for being an arrogant, snide asshole. God Bless America. Long live King George IV, who has just rejected a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee for the release of documents pertaining to the U.S. Attorney firings. That fuckbrain has shit on the Constitution repeatedly and has somehow managed to make the least respectable office in government even more so. He added broccoli to a tofu salad. (I HATE broccoli, and tofu tastes like Jezebel's uterine lining.)

...

Alright. It's a couple of hours later now, and hopefully, I've recovered a bit of focus. That meeting ended up clocking in at nearly two hours after being scheduled for one. The wave of fatigue that hit me was crippling and served only to further entrench [in me] the sense of vocational ennui I have been trying to cast into the fire.

But by all rights, this is starting to sound like one of my bitchy blog posts-further testament to the gravity of my self-involvement and perhaps a circuitous admission of observations made by my mother as to my emotional configuration. I will, under no circumstances, comment any further in that regard since the information is sensitive enough to warrant a level of secrecy on my part by avoiding its documentation in any form and at all costs.

Enough about me. I have neglected all this time to ask of New York. The Big Town. How is it treating you at this early stage in the game? Have you been admonished yet for being a Midwesterner or publicly flogged for not have a family member under investigation for mob-related crimes? I hope so. It's just the sort of excitement you need after languishing for so long along the quiet avenues of Chicago's western suburbs-those affluent streets lined with shadows and skeletons disguised as garden gnomes. We all need a kick in the pants every now and then, and perhaps the madding din of Gotham is yours. One can only hope. Indeed. Bend your will into the wind and defy those external forces that would see you broken down in the gutter and sucking the free-whiskey teat for crimes against False Democracy and Blind Patriotism. These are dangerous times for dissidents, my friend, but that simple fact should not precipitate mental erosion. No. It is time to cut your teeth and hone the killer instinct lodged deep within your reptilian core. You have no other choice, and besides, you will need it soon enough when the American Gestapo comes to confiscate any and all materials unrelated to the preservation of our superiority.

Some would call the anticipation of the American Police State foolish or irresponsible. Perhaps even naïve. You know as well as I what will go down in this country once the general public reaches the critical point of saturation. We both have had the same nightmares pressing at the backs of our eyes.

I regret that I haven't the time to discuss real news with you. It is marked, naturally, by the destructive stagnancy we have come to expect from our governing bodies, typified recently by the Senate's blockage of the immigration bill. Give them amnesty, I say. We've acted like a gang of toddler thugs crouched down in a tree house with waterguns and buckets of hot oil, waiting for little Sally Sweet-tits to ride by on her bike.

...son of a bitch. No energy again. The typewriter bruises my fingertips, but this pen has effectively worn away the ligaments in my knuckles. I'm afraid I'll have to cut this short right here and right now, continuing only to provide you with a little food for thought and maybe even a creeping feeling of nausea.

Hope you are as well as can be expected.

Best,

Paul
[em]

Paul Stanley
Pine Magazine

P.S. I have enclosed my only notes from three hours of meetings at my society's annual convention...well, actually they are notes from the prep meeting. It's all the same bullshit anyway. Selah!

NOTES

• Bad age jokes. Already bleeding. I'm looking down the barrel at two hours of this insufferable shit. The office. Some terrible nightmare even Fritz Lang couldn't have imagined.
• Two years here as of June 13, and when that day comes, my head will implode taking everything with it. The Earth will be lost in the supermassive black hole that was once my cranial supernova. Good fucking riddance to me and mine. Once you step foot in the tar, you're stuck...and not because you want to be or meant to be.
• Customer service is key, a dish best served with lye and armor-piercing bullets. Get straight to their hearts even if it means stopping them.