Thoughtless for the Day

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

- Last words of Pancho Villa

"All-in-all, it's been a good life." This is what I told myself last Saturday Night (S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!) as I lay in bed, my temperature nearing that Phoenix parking lot in August. Convinced that I'm about to die of the flu (and acutely aware that when I do, I'll be accused of ripping off Lester Bangs) I begin to catalog my life's accomplishments: the best that I can come up with is "managed to remain married for a dozen years." A few hours later, as my temperature climbs even higher I expand the list by adding "Most popular member of the Allman Brothers" and "First Black Pope on Mars".

"Of course there'll be some sort of memorial concert," I think in an effort to cheer myself up that instantly backfires as it dawns on me that the musicians involved will no doubt focus on Milkmen material and total ignore my work with Burn Witch Burn as the latter is some difficult shit to play and the lyrics are mostly in Esperanto. Dejected, I picture the event: Mojo Nixon flubs the words to Bitchin' Camero; The Low Budgets launch into a spirited version of Institutionalized, mistakenly believing it to be a DM tune; no one takes seriously my dying request that Elton John be flown in to sing Candle in the Wind, so the entire fiasco ends with everybody gathering on stage to lip sync to The Pina Colada Song, which they re-christen The Penis Colostomy Song in my honor.

Needless to say, I pulled through. I chalk this up entirely to my complete lack of faith in the existence of a God. One of the reasons that True Believers are constantly dropping like flies (apart from obvious incidents like Waco and Jonestown) is their tendency to quit fighting for their lives when faced with even the most trivial of illnesses. If I had a dime for every Fundie who expired from a hangnail while uttering "Glory be, I'm a goin' to that big tractor-pull in the sky to be wit' Jessie Helms" I'd be writing this piece from my villa in Tuscany on a laptop made from Juliette Lewis' panties. Atheists know that there's no massive reunion waiting for us after we snuff it (Like a Candle in the Wind); that's why we fight back from the brink of death time and time again.

Without question, the worst part of being sick was having to miss Bloomsday. Bloomsday is the ultimate Us vs. Them event. I know people who've never read Ulysses, but who love Bloomsday simply because They just don't get it.

When They buy a house, They look for nearby churches. When We rent an apartment, We look for Thai restaurants. If you think that everybody in America subscribes to Skeptical Inquirer you're in for a sad awakening.

Once every four years, the whole Us vs. Them thing extends itself into the world of sports. We hate sports. The only sports program We've ever watched is Sports Disasters. And yet we love the World Cup. Maybe it's because the World Cp is the athletic version of The Saddest Music in the World, or maybe it's because to truly enjoy the World Cup it helps to have a grasp of geo-politics, so They naturally just don't get it.

The more I thought about this Us vs. Them thing, the more I thought about how we're getting the short end of the stick. They get to have a Superbowl, World Series, and NBA Championship every year (not to mention NASCAR and Wrestle Mania). We have to wait every four years for Our World Cup. They have Christmas, Easter, a National Day of Prayer, and Lynch a Homo Nigger Day. We have Bloomsday (One of you should get off your lazy ass and write a book claiming that there's a War on Bloomsday). We need at least one more thing to celebrate. And that's when I had an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch had a wonderful, awful idea...