You're Making Me Hate You (28 page)

The fucked-up thing is that we’re in danger of passing it down to our children. Even if it feels like we’re slowly phasing racism out, that doesn’t mean it’s our only dumb familial keepsake. We’re all dumb in different ways, like rules and laws. In Michigan, schools will not allow children to bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Why? Because of allergies—other children’s allergies, as if the kids are using these sandwiches as weapons against those afflicted. If you’re bringing PB&J to school, you might be a poor kid. You’re not going to risk your meal on a kid who’s equipped with an EpiPen. Ain’t just the UP: kids in Vegas schools aren’t allowed to bring backpacks to school. Why? Because of drugs. Because we
all know
every kid in the world is on fucking drugs. Kids have an excuse—they don’t know any fucking better. All you adults? You guys are bulbous spitting dickheads, and you should fucking know better. The fact that you don’t means the Mayans won.

I hate to say it, but a lot of this idiocy starts here in America—the “greatest” country on the planet, or at least that’s what we’re all so quick to say. I think we have to say that legally now. I believe some genius trademarked “the greatest country in the world” along with any and every variation of that statement and now gets half a penny whenever someone uses it in a speech or during a comedy show and so forth. The money from that phrase goes to cleaning the acid rain damage off of all of our national monuments. Pretty soon you’ll see it on gag Ts in Camden, right next
to “YOLO” and “Just Do It.” That pretty much says it all, because once you’ve made it to those shitty T-shirts, your life as a piece of intelligence is very over. Just look how many people try to spread sage advice using thoughts like “Lead, follow, or get out of the way” and “No fat chicks.” You’re absolutely right, Brandon:
nobody
uses those phrases to appear smart. You know why? Because clichés are the quickest way to piss on the fires of intellectual thirst. With regret, no one pisses quite like America.

I’ve reached the age now that I would offer this country the same advice I give my friends and kids, and forgive me if I use one of those clichés I spoke about: actions speak louder than words. You can talk a great game, but if you don’t back it up, all you’re doing is hogging the oxygen and lying. I used to get pissed when people talked shit about America. Now I just duck my head and try to ignore the dumb shit, which means I tend to keep my head down all the time. All you have to do is look at our very strange sense of sexuality to determine that there’s something very warped about these United States. We’ve gone from a people who once made Benny Goodman a sex symbol to peddling fuck tapes by the latest castoff from
Survivor
. Even my son has a weird sense of what it means to be from around here. He said something funny once and I told him he should be a comedian. He looked at me deadly serious and said, “I’m not a comedian. I’m a ’Murican.” Besides the accidental profundity, the gallant little maniac had a point.

The crazy thing about my son is he’s accidentally profound all the time.
So
much so that I wrote the stuff down for posterity. He likes to play outside in his camouflage costume a lot, so he’ll paint his face to match it and splatter himself with fake blood left over from Halloween. After he’s done, it takes hours to get the shit off, that’s how covered he is. So after the first pass with
the soap and water, I make him come out to show me. One time he hadn’t quite gotten the fake blood all the way off and I told him he needed to go back because he missed some. He looked at me in shock and said, “Wait—you can still see the murder on me?” It gives me peace and shows me that deep down he knows what’s up. I don’t worry about video game violence and all that other “parent panic” shit with him; between his reservoirs of empathy and his burgeoning wit, he’s going to be just fine. But other adults would throw a fucking tizzy. They have no relationship with their kids, so they don’t talk. If they don’t talk, they won’t listen. So why would they listen when you tell them to get off their phones or computers and go outside? With a roll of their eyes, they just leave the room so you can’t see them.

Oh my fucking god, speaking of phones and zoning out, I’ve got to tell you about a beautiful moment before I forget—classic fucking human behavior.

I drive a lot. Making the new Slipknot album, I had to drive in California a lot, which is like going in for a fucking enema every other day. When I drive, I pay attention, which means I watch people all the time. I watch people wander out into traffic to cross the street whether they’re on the corner or not, and they’re always on their phones, staring at the screen. Whenever I see people not paying attention to their surroundings and completely glued to their shitty little life suckers, my toe unconsciously inches toward the gas pedal. That’s how ferocious I get. But this wasn’t the case. But it was. Shit, let me explain a little better.

I was at the corner of Pico and Doheny, preparing to make a left turn—not a California Left, which means you drive for ten miles in the right-hand lane, then decide to cross two to three lanes of traffic in half a block when you get to the street you were looking for to make a left turn, yelling at people when they don’t let you swerve right through their lives. No, I was going to make a
proper left turn, which meant I got into the far lane miles before, used the turning lane
and
my blinker, and was waiting patiently for the gap in the traffic. I was sitting there, getting ready to make my move, when I saw a young man in what I can only describe as “Department Store Cool” clothes: pink V-neck scrubby T-shirt, khaki pants rolled right to below the knee, dress shoes, no socks, and a flip-brim hat with shitty graffiti underneath. Of course, he crossed the street slowly, staring at his phone the whole way, breaking at least two of my commandments in this very book. My knuckles whitened, my teeth grit, and I smoked my cigarette a little harder as I tracked his movements.

I’m here to tell you: I have a serious condition. You’re reading the ramblings of a man with terrible anger issues. I say this because I was wishing and praying for something to happen to him the whole time I was watching him. I don’t use the term “pray” very lightly—you all know me—but I tell you, I was almost willing to give in and subscribe to a faith
and
acquiesce to a deity as long as something shitty happened to this walking nightmare of an Old Navy commercial. Then suddenly a miracle happened. This kid’s shoe snagged on a piece of the sidewalk that was jutting up and he fell so hard on his face that it looked like it hurt. I was so startled to have my wish come true that I laughed out loud—
really loud
, like loud enough the fucking kid heard me over whatever shit music was blaring in his ear buds. Hell, I didn’t give a shit—I gave him the same smile I give everyone: “Serves you fucking right, you dickhead. Next time pay the fuck attention.” It was then that I realized that my prayer had come true. A deal’s a deal—I was fully ready to find a church and submit. I was, that is, until my own toe caught on the lip of a sidewalk while I was jogging, and I too went down hard. The universe had spoken: shit will happen everywhere.

Mea culpa, Old Navy Dude.

The world’s fashion is fishing for what’s new instead of what’s awesome. No one gives a shit about feeling good as long as you’ve never felt it before, even though if you’re old enough, you
have
felt it before. All they’re doing is recycling the styles from twenty to thirty years ago. We do the same thing with music because lazy artists assume that people have no memory of the songs from the past, even though most of them are on a lot of the oldies stations. Laterally, designers automatically assume that you’ve forgotten style if you’re old. Same shit—different decade. It’s all recycling, as I’ve said. Also, the rule of thumb used to be “when comfort outweighs cool in regards to fashion, you know you’re officially old.” Now? Doesn’t work or look like that. People from all walks of life dress like they’re going down to pick up food stamps. Having grown up on food stamps myself, I know the look too well. I spent the first fifteen years of my life dressed as a “hipster”—now you want me to pay thousands of dollars to do it again? You can violently go fuck yourself.

I’m trying, kids. I’m really trying to understand why you do the things you do. Maybe it’s the confusion that comes with age. The prior generation never understands the decisions of the one that follows it, and vice versa. But by now I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that if you’re dreaming and your “character” has to pee, it means you’re either going to wake up and rage-piss at 3 a.m. or you’re going to wet the bed, the latter happening if your dream-self finds a bathroom. I’ve also learned this: life is like the statue in the stone—you have to grind away the shit that doesn’t matter to see it, which is almost always made of the stuff between you and what you want on the inside. Yeah, I say and do a lot of crazy shit, but I’ve never let my eyes slip from what’s important. God knows I’ve had plenty of opportunities to lose the map, the plot, and the place in the book. The fact that I’m still on the path means I’m doing something right.

Sure, I’ve made some enemies. The more I look around, the more it seems they’re online too. There have been rumors of my death for years now. I’m beginning to think my main job in life is to piss people off with Wi-Fi. That’s a lot of death-wishful thinking going on for that many rumors to start. They say “don’t kill the messenger.” That’s all I am—a messenger. My message may suck and sting from time to time. But all it is, really, is offered advice. You could all tell me to go fuck myself in the end (not you wonderfully intelligent peeps reading this, of course, but those other people, the cattle with Instagram accounts …). If I spent half the time worrying about what people would say about me, I’d be a mute motherfucker with murder in his eyes. So I don’t sweat it. I just get it. It’s not my fault there are a lot of dumb-ass jive pricks on the ground. Then again, conversely, it’s my right—and subsequent duty—to inform you when you all start to act like kack. Will it do me any good? Probably not. However, you don’t run a marathon to get somewhere—that’s why we have cars. You don’t scream righteous indignation to hear yourself curse; you do it in the hopes that you might be heard someday.

Humans dress like shit, drive like shit, fly like shit, wait like shit, love like shit, talk like shit, act like shit, listen to shit, dance to shit, jump at shit, laugh at shit, make up shit, break up shit, and absolutely positively
take no shit
for it. We rub each other the wrong way, then fight to prove we’re no “bitch” or that we’re “keeping it real” or just being “straight thug.” Is this all we got? Is this all that’s left? A professional shit-throwing contest in which whoever still has clothing showing wins? Are we doomed to kill each other because we’re all so stupid we don’t understand the concept of “we’re all in this together”? Will we ourselves be the reason that Homo sapiens die out like the other hundred variations of humanity that we eventually outlasted? Just the fact
that I
know
some of you snickered at “Homo sapiens” doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence for our future; in fact, it makes me want to crawl under my bed and read Stephen King’s
The Stand
until Armageddon comes to flush our toilet. Be careful with the gun you pull—the finger on the trigger may be your own, but the target might just be yourself.

Let me explain to you how fucked up and malicious I actually am.

Sometimes, on those rare occasions when I have some time to myself, I consider a sadistic and hilarious scenario. I think about making my way out to an abandoned house somewhere, someplace quiet, remote, and dark. Picture that road that no one likes to go down. Now picture that house out there that no one wants to go to. Anyway, I’d go into that house, then I would sit cross-legged in the middle of one of the most removed of the rooms, the one at the very back corner or the one at the other end of the stairs. I would find that room, sit down … and wait. I would sit through the last of the day’s light, watch the coming dusk, and let the resulting darkness wash over me like an effervescence. I would sit and wait … for someone to come around exploring. I know from experience that kids can’t resist an abandoned
anything
. So I would just bide my time until someone showed up. It might not happen right away—hell, it might not even happen that night. It might take a couple of trips. But when someone did, I’d sit in the dark, listening to them move through the house. I’d wait until they got to the room I was sitting in.

Then I would scare the ever-living fuck out of them.

I would control my breathing as best I could, wait until they were well inside the confines of our surroundings, then I would simply say, “This isn’t your house.” Or I would just reach out one hand and tickle their ankle. Or I would move fast and push
my nose against their face, whispering harshly, “You’re not supposed to be here, motherfucker.” Oh Mylanta, it would be divine torture. Then I would try to watch—as best as my eyes would allow me, having adjusted to the dark—and listen intently as they nearly killed themselves getting the fuck out of there. In a perfect world they would spread the word about “the insane dude who sits in the dark waiting for victims at that abandoned place over off the highway.” That would then become an urban legend. Eventually I would have a hook for a hand, an eye patch, a wooden leg, and blood in my teeth. I would end up armed with a cricket bat lined with razor blades and a vicious backhand. Just thinking about it makes me smile until my face hurts. Then you know what I’d do? I’d wait until the scuttlebutt died down a little bit, then I would do the exact same thing, but this time dressed exactly like how the legend says I was dressed: hook, peg leg, eye patch, cricket bat, and a mouthful of fake blood, ready to scare bitches straight.

I wouldn’t do this completely for myself. I’d do it to make a point. I read your posts, I watch your habits, and I have come to the conclusion that none of you are capable of handling the unexpected. You couldn’t handle having the fuck scared out of you in a house you just assume is empty. So how are you going to handle rent, a mortgage, kids, bills, and so on? Basically, how are you going to handle life in general? I know according to that shitty fuckhole of a machine called television, every commercial and show makes life look like one big fucking Dairy Queen orgy, complete with acoustic jams and barbeques on resurfaced decks. This is not the case. You can’t live with your parents forever, no matter how many times you drop out of school or lose your job at Claire’s Boutique. You can’t pay your bills or make a living if you fuck around your whole shitty life. What are you
contributing to the world? If you don’t have an answer for that, you aren’t doing shit. You can blame everyone—politicians, musicians, teachers, actors, friends, and parents—all you want. But it’s your shit. If it ain’t together, you’re fucked.