The Seven Deadly Sins (14 page)

But I am just one guy with an overactive adrenalin gland. There are no universal rules to how a body works. Maybe some of you
do
need a few extra hands to get that boost for action. You run the risks in a race against yourself. You just have to know which way the starter pistol is pointing so you do not get your face blown off. In fact, most people who get ahead have not done shit to do so. Look at most celebrity children. Now, I am very sensitive to this because I have children of my own and I know someday they might suffer in this comparative light. But most other famous broods fucking bask in it and are just fine doing nothing more. Give them a trust fund and a lifetime of margaritas and they are all set—no want or need to contribute to the human collective. With enough coverage on TMZ and E! Entertainment, they make sure that the world as a whole covets their “reality” show as well. But have you ever noticed how every reality show has an army of producers making sure the “reality” is exciting? These people cannot even take care of their own lives without a director to tell them how to shit.

So between sloth and envy, these lucky fucks have it made. I wonder if their mothers realize how charmed their vaginas are. They spit out nouveau riche knock-offs like yeast infections. In the galactic crapshoot, they win the big bear no one can get in the backseat of their cars. It must really be a burden to be born with everything and left with very little. Most rich people I know are uninteresting piles of havoc. The only real thing they have ever had to experience was being chastised for trying to steal money from a wishing well; they were convinced all money was theirs.

What really chaps my Irish ass is when these sloth-bucklers have the audacity to complain when people try to fuck with their
ride: “Oh, my problems, my problems.” How about you get off of your dead asses and do a decent day's fucking work for a change, you ungrateful dick smokers? When you are living a gilded life, what in the hell do you have to complain about? Sit in your fucking cages and shut the fuck up. Well, I guess my rage is flaring up, and it could be the Herculean amounts of coffee I have been chugging since this morning. But even if I was not jacked up on French roast, I would still be adamant about my hatred for these jackasses who cannot seem to raise up enough to keep from sitting on their own hands. The fact that they decry those who have worked hard, if not harder, than not only themselves, but more than likely their own parents is enough for me to want to kiss them on the foreheads with a baseball bat. So pass a note to those whining dildos: Do something worth our admiration and maybe we will give you a call. Until that time, go fuck your living selves.

Yeah, I have some issues. So what? At least I am busy, right? I am every bit as bad as the apples I am juicing. You will never get me to admit it in court, though. There is something to be said about still recognizing your own stink, if you get my drift. Just because I empathize does not mean I sympathize. These people never slept on the street. They never ate garbage, and they never lived through a cold night in their entire lives. Do not expect me to give a rosy red clit rubbing if one of their trophy pets dies or their fake tan goes from brown to khaki. I would not chum the Pacific with their leftovers to draw in sharks. If that makes me a bad person, then fuck yeah, give me all the black clothing you got and a damsel in distress to tie to some railroad tracks. Nah, that is too dated—I will just run over with a rented Segway any skinny stupid blonde debutantes who get in my way.

I am the other end of the swimming pool. I am the reason I cannot sleep at night. Why do the freeloaders bother me so much? Maybe it is because I have never claimed more than I have earned. Maybe it is that I cannot and probably will never relate to a life spent in almost utter absentia. All I have known in my life is work and progress. All I have been shown is that you must make yourself a legend in order to scratch your name on the Great Oak. So when “entitled” morons get thrown book deals and movie roles and unmerited praise, I hang my head and fight back too many vicious tirades to count on my phalanges. When I see one of them embroiled in controversy, I feel the same way I do when a Kennedy dies. That may be a little dark, but I have nothing in common with a hierarchy that hides behind money to fund a lifestyle that is debased, tawdry, and counterfeit to the core. We can do better, or at least we can hope for better. They cannot: They are stuck being gold-plated, dim-witted, and asinine. You would have thought that with all that money, they could have hired someone to tell them that marrying cousins does wonders for the gene pool.

I wish I knew a fart joke to lighten the mood right now, but so much for pathos. Tell you what—I will get a grip when they get a clue. What the fuck can they take from me that I cannot do without? I can play and sing on any street corner and scrounge enough to buy a pack of smokes. I can scream my diabolical diatribes at open-mike nights to a packed house of seven people and be okay. What can they take? They cannot take anything from me. So I will never take back anything I have ever said. This is me scared shitless—any questions?

Maybe that is the key. Sloth plants seeds of doubt in the most fertile fields of man. I have no doubts in my abilities or talents.
I am not saying I am cocksure or full of myself. I just know what I can do. So I do it a lot. I do it whether I get paid or not. I am an entertainer at day's end, and as long as there are people lining up to see me do whatever it is I do, who the hell am I to rest on laurels that can wait until I am infirm and gray? I want the world, and that does not jibe with sloth at all. I am just not in tune with this “sin.” I am still not convinced it is a sin. It is a ludicrous place in the soul that just wants to stake a claim and sit on it. I do not want to start sounding older than I am, but what the hell is wrong with that? Is that what we are left with in this country? A horde of shiftless wonders who cannot tie their shoes without looking it up on Google? I do not buy it and I would like to put whoever is selling it out of business. Old fogies go on and on about “the good old days” when honesty and sweat built an empire called the USA. I wish I had just a single memory of any of that time; maybe if I did I would not be so angry. People always say that “times are changing.” But time does not change—people do. Time does what it has always done, rolling over us like waves of warm water and setting us to simmer in baths of inevitability. Time only points us in the right direction. It will never make you move on your own.

If satisfaction is the murderer of our dreams, then sloth supplies the pillows we suffocate under when we try to lower our heads to rest. It seems like such a lukewarm and harmless thing, but sloth can erode bones from the inside. It can harvest dead wheat in a land of plenty. It can rip us to pieces with the simplest action, which is doing nothing whatsoever. So to rally the troops, we must control our appetites for lush extravagance. We need to remember that although Rome was not built in a day, it was also not built with prayers and wishes. It takes people to do
what the people want. Leaders come and go, but the fire of our will has burned down the greatest obstacles of our lives. We cannot give in to commonplace worries. We have to be willing to face our instincts and sort them with rationality. The battles of our generation will be fought not on the streets but in our minds, because who can ever beat us one on one?

Sins have stained the cloths of royalty and ruined the air we breathe from time to time. Sins have pulled apart rope bridges left for escape and leveled the temples we dared to worship in back when we were a little bit different and a little more the same. But banality is hardly a sin. Being benign and faltering from lack of use is really just another reminder that we are three inches farther away from each other than the last time we stopped and talked. No effort means no more flyaway hairs standing on end in acrimonious displays of disagreement. No qualms or shows of distaste means not so much blood to clean from our hands and fingernails. How many species can say with as much brutal truth as possible that by not saying or doing anything, they are keeping us from killing each other?

Our proximity keeps us honest. Our intentions keep us strangers.

When I was young, we sat on stoops and sang the evenings back into their shoeboxes so as not to lose any stars. Apartment buildings were brick villages, and around 5 p.m., those who worked came home and those who played joined them for some air. I remember barbecues and discussions, sociable symmetry on Thursday nights. Sloth was used to enjoy sun tea and potato salad until the chicken was done. Sloth was grabbing a lawn chair and talking about the preseason with 1A across the hall
and 2B upstairs. This was no sin: It was
siesta
, a way of coaxing a little more life out of languid hours and good company. If sloth is deadly, then just plain lazy will put you in a coma. Iowa is a wonderful place for this type of exemption. We are the middle, but in the middle of nowhere. We seem to be a punch line to the Coasts, but we were the first to legalize same sex marriage. The whole country glues itself to our doorstep every four years for the caucuses, where political bigwigs watch the outcomes like starving hawks on a day pass. So we must be doing something better than they are, like turning slothfulness into an exotic hobby. I am a blue-collar guy with a white-collar income. Iowa gave me appreciation for everything, including the rare spare time I have.

So what do we do? I say we retire sloth to the Vatican like a superstar's number in his home stadium. They can hang it in the Sistine Chapel next to God's pointer finger, as if he is saying, “Wow, remember when something as boring as sloth was considered one of the seven deadly sins? I sure am glad Corey Taylor cleared up all that doubt for us. My, he is a handsome fellow. He truly is created in my image. Have you seen his neck? The thing is like a tree trunk, are you fucking kidding me? You would go through four axes before you made a dent!” Okay, maybe that is not the conversation your God is saying, but my God curses and thinks my neck should be declared a national treasure. No? Your loss, people.

Anyway, we could do the unthinkable and make sloth an ice cream flavor. The trouble would come when no one had the energy to taste it. We could sponsor a car in its honor: the new Ford Sloth. It would never sell all that well though. . .
because all it would do is idle!!!!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
That shit was real
as fuck!! Did you read that? It was amazing!! You do not have to admit it. I know the truth. That shit worked on two different levels—total and utter brilliance! Ooh, we could discover a new species of plant life and incorporate sloth into its Latin translation. Now we just need to find a fuzzy little fern that grows no higher than a foot off the ground, depletes the food and water all around it, and very well could be harvested and made into stuffing for organic pillows. I predict a new hot item for next Christmas.

This is proving to be the hardest chapter to write. I mean, how many different ways can you be clever talking about a state of mind that is not far from a vegetative state? I suppose there are worse things that could happen, like the earth's orbit could pull Halley's Comet into our atmosphere and hammer it into the bedrock beneath the ocean floor, flash boiling deciliters of salt water, creating tsunamis and tidal waves not seen since the earth was forming. Between the catastrophic effects of the initial impact and the resulting shifts in polarity and plate activity, I would give the earth minutes, not days. In the event that that shit happens, this is exactly what I am going to do:

I am going to corral my wife, my children, and any other family members standing close by and get them to “safety.” I will then give my children hugs and kisses, grab my wife's sweet sexy ass, and head for Wal-Mart. I will pick out the nicest hammock available. I am not that big of a snob when it comes to designer colors, but it has to be super comfy and ultra-simple to set up. I will then help myself to four Texas fifths of my man, my friend, my saucy dancing partner, Mr. Jack Daniels. I will then return to my family's whereabouts, string up my hammock, and drink until impact. Just for good measure, as that heavenly body of
horse fucker is plummeting toward my planet, I am going to drink a shot off of my wife's ample chest and flip that son of a bitch off as it hits the ground. Maybe I will also jump in the air as it is hitting.

Jesus stuffed-crab Christ, even in a no-win scenario, with no chance of survival, I cannot relax enough to find a way to even approach being slothful. I am a failure at fallacies. I guess I am just doomed to be on point, all the time, till that son-of-a-bitch fucking comet gets here. Yeah, I know it will never happen, but it is not the only thing hurtling through space. We are not the focal point of the universe—hell, we are not even an exit sign for the universal highway. We are more like one of the pebbles they use to cover the sides of the road. That is the size proportion we are dealing with: galactic soap scum in the big bathtub in the sky.