I Drink for a Reason (11 page)

The ones that look like Raggedy Anne and Andy

B12 (obviously!!)

C

K

C+

D–

Niacin (duh!)

A

E

Zinc (surprise!)

B6

St. John’s Wort (not a vitamin really, but still… )

’Sup.

Shalom.

’Allo, guv.

Mushi-Mushi.

Duuuude!

Buenos dias.

Ugh.

Hey, you’re that guy from the thing!

Malcom X

“Where’s the beef?”

One thousand four hundred and three

The Who’s
Live at Leeds

Connie Chung

PooBerries

Seattle

Bianca Jagger

Mylanta Chewables

A patch of Kentucky bluegrass

“Yahtzee!”

Les Savy Fav

W
E’VE ALL BEEN TO
U
RBAN
O
UTFITTERS
,
SO DON’T TRY TO
bullshit me. If you insist on lying and saying that you haven’t, then I’ll describe it. It’s a store that is targeted to
“hipsters,” but no real hipster would be caught dead in there unless they wanted that one cool shower curtain that has pictures
of turn-of-the-century French nudie postcards that no one else carries anymore so you have no choice but to go there, right?
Most of the stuff there is not too offensively lame. Mostly that kitchy shit that girls who dye one small streak of their
hair purple or pink or some other Manic Panic color think is cute. Genetalia-shaped ice-cube trays or mood rings, or Che Guevara–scented
candles. Shit like that. But the one part of Urban Outfitters I really take issue with is their line of faux vintage “hip”
T-shirts. They are sooooo unfunny and obvious, and only a total tool into Three Doors Down who still drinks vodka and Red
Bull and is starting to seriously get into UFC fighting would think they were cool for wearing one. So, with that in mind,
I have some suggestions for the next line of T-shirts to be sold at Urban Outfitters. Just sneak them in there amongst the
regular ones. Maybe someone will buy one by mistake and get beat up in a bar.

I Brake for Fucking

Punch Me, I’m Pregnant

Don’t Bother Me, I’m a Pedophile

I Have to Go to the Bathroom

My Other Shirt Is Funnier

This shirt was made by slave labor and sold for a 1,200% markup

Look at what I think is interesting!

Oklahoma Is for Racists!

My Other Car Is a Porsche

Penny for your thoughts? Are you fucking nuts? Try ten bucks for my thoughts is more like it! This is America!

Don’t Blame Me! I Voted for Christ!

God Is My Enabler

I Fucked Jesus

Mohammed told me he thinks his followers are lunatics

Hugh Hefner’s got nothing on Joseph Smith!

My God can beat up your God

Thank God for Autistic Children

P
ART OF TODAY’S MODERN BOOK
-
SELLING PROCESS IS THE
“
BOOK
tour,” in which the author or a suitable pre-approved surrogate
^*
travels to various bookstores around the country and occasional Canadian province and reads excerpts from his or her book
that is being sold mere inches away. Depending on the author’s comfort with public speaking, this can be either a frightening
and excruciating chore or another in a rarely ending series of ego-inflating exercises happily sponsored by Absolut Vodka.
I am of the latter camp. I was trained professionally at the Helmsdale Institute for Audience Ignoring, and that makes me
uniquely qualified contractually to help sell this book by reading from it in places like [fill in the name of the city you
are currently in here].

Before I continue and read from the book and then have the raffle for the set of outdoor throw pillows designed by Asconti,
let me just say that [fill in the name of the city you are currently in here] is really cool! I love the history and culture
here! I can’t believe that that lady who did that thing lived at that house just down the road! As someone who has traveled
all over the world, whether shooting pheasant with the Earl of Duke in Shroppingham or enjoying “Untouchables” eyeball soup
with the Rani of Kharmuknan, I can easily say that [fill in the name of the city you are currently in here] is the most wonderful
place I’ve ever visited. I wish I could live here! God!! Have you checked out the Bed Bath & Beyond here?! I’ve seen a bunch
of those, but man, this one … wow! Seriously, I’m not getting paid by them or anything
(NOTE TO EDITOR: SEE ABOUT GETTING PAID BY THEM! Also, the socks need discussion!!!)
, but you should check out the towel section, tons of great shit cheap! I can see why you’d want to stay here and never leave.
Not even to take a bit of time to visit other parts of the world.

Well, enough about your lovely town and its convenient access to various products that you feel you need, let’s read some
of this insulting book! I mean,
interesting
book! Haha. I said “insulting” by mistake. Slip of the tongue there. Just a Freudian slip. Wait! No, not Freudian, that would
imply that I subconsciously felt that this book is insulting when it is not. It’s
me
who can be insulting … and occasionally cynical and condescending, sure, but not the book. Arrrgh! I’ve got to stop believing
my own press! I’m not some grumpy Gen-X Andy Rooney. I’m barely even Gen-X! By, like, a month or something. I missed being
a Baby Boomer by about five minutes. I sooooo want to be a Baby Boomer! Anyway, the book is great, I’m proud of it! I wrote
a book, for fuck’s sake! What have you ever done? Tipped generously at a Hooter’s in Playa del Carmen? Fixed your elderly
neighbor’s satellite dish? Made a kid? Who gives a shit? I can make a kid no one but you and maybe a handful of babysitters
will ever give a shit about. I can do that with just my cock and a roofie. If contributing yet another human monkey to this
overcrowded world to do nothing with their precious gift of life other than spend it predictably consuming precious resources
and blogging about how they think that
American Idol
is starting to lose it, so they can then grow up to make another un-notable Wal-Mart greeter—if that makes you some sort
of hero, then call 911 and tell them I give up.

Okay, let’s get to the good stuff, the reason we’re all here! The chance to sit in a room with someone who’s been on your
television box because that’s so fascinating to the dull and uninspired. What!? I didn’t mean that. I don’t even know any
of you. I’m sure that for the most part, at least half of you aren’t a bunch of boring, complacent, slightly overweight people
haunted by the constant nagging of “what if”s and “should I have”s. Okay, okay, sit down. Please, I apologize … to God … for
you. No! No, sorry. That was a stupid joke. I don’t even believe in God. I don’t know what’s come over me. It’s been a long
tour. I ran out of Zoloft back in Jacksonville. Plus I was just in Jacksonville. I am having some more Zoloft air-lifted in,
so as soon as it gets here I’ll be okay. Just pretend I’m my own evil twin or something. Just until the Zoloft gets here and
then we’ll be right as rain. At least I can take a pill and get better—you lot are stuck in your shitty uneventful lives unless
one of you turns goth and decides to check out Portland or something. Oh my lord! Please forgive me. It’s been a very long
day. I had to do three morning radio shows and
FOX & Friends
at the crack of dawn. Have you ever seen
FOX and Friends
? How? Why? These are grown-ups saying this nonsense! The inanity of that show is matched only by its meaninglessness. One
of Amy Winehouse’s collapsed veins has more weight than that show.

All right, good. Now we’re back to something we can all agree on, the outrageous
FOX & Friends
. They honestly look like they truly believe what they are saying! Can you imagine getting drunk and hanging out with the
three of them? I can. We’d have margs at the Yupplebee’s and I would drink them all under the table and then I’d probably
find myself tying them up and burying them up to their necks in the middle of the projects in Detroit. That sounds fun, actually.
Let me linger on that image for one sweet second. Mmmmm. Oh, that’s good. Woah! There’s Steve Douchey being shat upon by one
of the neighborhood kids! Oh! Hahahaha! Mmmm, yeah … that’s the way I like it … like that. Yeah, get that spot over there
… good. Mmmmmm, oh … I’m gonna cum. Don’t stop shitting … unh. Sputter. Snore.

as written by Kenny Dupree Hester

Y
OU’VE PROBABLY READ ALL ABOUT THIS BY NOW
,
BUT ENOUGH
time has passed that I feel like I want to tell my side of the story, so here goes. There are three things you should know
about my Aunt Patricia (really my great aunt, but we just call her aunt): One, she is a devout, constantly churchgoing Baptist.
Two, she is quiet, and even timid. And three, she hates the cold. That’s why it was so surprising last year when Aunt Patricia
casually announced to our family and friends that she had sold all her belongings except for her three favorite Thomas Kincaid
paintings (
Summer’s Light Light, The House by the Stream with Horses Nearby It,
and
When an Angel Finds a Wallet
) and gave all the money to a shady group in the woods who used it to purchase a number of semiautomatic weapons and a barn
on a big plot of land in Upstate NY. This of course was met with confusion as not one of us could ever remember her making
a joke, let alone laughing. Although my sister says she saw her laugh when an elderly man was running for a bus that pulled
away without him right as he got up to the door. And I guess she did love watching
Mama’s Family,
she just never laughed at it.

It was clear she was being dramatic in the way she was parsing out the information. My mom knew enough to take her seriously
but could do nothing but wait on the phone patiently for Aunt Patricia to fill in the blanks. Eventually she explained that
she and a handful of members of her church group, “The Guardians of the Realm of Good,” in Henry, Georgia, were planning to
move to New Harriden in New York state, a small rural town bordering Canada. There they would form the “New, New Minutemen”
(as they referred to themselves), made up of various “intercessors” from other like-minded church groups across the country
who would keep watch over America’s border and defend it from newly married Canadian homosexual couples who might be trying
to sneak into the country to advance their homosexual agenda. They were very, very serious.

Aunt Patricia was known for being a bit “lost” when it came to matters both social and practical in her life. She was always
searching for a clique to belong to. Whether it was something as small as a group of new friends she’d try to make through
a sewing circle or book club or her unsuccessful attempt at a “Raisin of the Month” party she tried to get going. Sometimes
it was something much more involved, like joining every church in a fifty-mile radius at once, she never seemed to either
have enough friends to satisfy her or couldn’t maintain them as friends.

Before being newly re-re-baptized in “The Guardians of the Realm of Good,” Aunt Patricia was a member of “The Church of the
Good Deed,” which she joined after leaving “The Shield of the Wrath of Christ,” an offshoot of “The Church of Christ and Friends,”
which had split from “The Church of the All-Powerful Redeemer” in 1982 over its use of the phrase “befouled menstrual blood
of the filthier half.” That had been included in a screed written by Delmont Ralston, the church’s personable leader, who
was killed in 1985 when he tried to eat a lightning bolt. Before she started to attend all of these different churches, Aunt
Patricia was involved in our local neighborhood theater group, helping to stage inoffensive musicals like
Parrump! Oh Boy! What Fun!
and
The Great Missouri Whistle Days Discovery.
We didn’t really spend too much time with her, as my mom clearly had nothing in common with her and, in fact, felt she was
a near constant source of annoyance with her corrections and holier-than-thou attitude. That was okay with my sisters and
me, as none of us particularly liked her, either.

I remember one Christmas, she gave all of us Confederate scrip, which is worthless unless you have a working time machine.
Another time she gave the three of us kids compost, lecturing us on the “divine sanctity which has been granted in the compost
through the gift of God and emanates from within, purifying all who touch it.” Like I said before, she wasn’t any fun. She
didn’t even approve of water-skiing, saying once that it was “an activity that could only be sanctioned by Satan himself.”
Aunt Patricia was married to my Great-Uncle Abraham, who I don’t remember too much about, since he died when I was young.
I do remember he smoked a pipe and had jackets with patches on the elbows that smelled like old mustard and that he had gross,
hairy ears. Really hairy, though, not just a little bit, but like, all hair. It made me think that ear hair must have hurt
because otherwise he’d just cut it off. Then, when I got older and learned that it didn’t hurt, it actually made me a little
sick to my stomach every time I’d think of him after that.

On the day we found out, my sisters, Abby and Jenny, and I were out back in the woods lazily playing some kind of freeze-tag
game in which the rules were being made up and changed as we went along. My mom came outside with the phone in her hands.
She seemed upset and yelled to us with the kind of tone she only used for bad news or when she had one of her stomachaches
but didn’t want to show it. Without even waiting for a response, Mom yelled at us to all come inside. My sister Abby started
whining about how we just got out there and we were in the middle of the game, and Mom yelled at Abby to get inside NOW and
went back in, letting the screen door slam shut (which she HATED whenever we did it) behind her. Abby started again with her
whining: “But, Mom, you said . . .” I hit Abby in the head with a crabapple and told her to shut up. When she said she was
gonna tell on me I said “Go right ahead. Mom hates you right now for crying when she told you to get inside. She’ll probably
give me a dessert reward ’cause I made you quit.” That shut her up, and she tromped into the kitchen behind me.