The Double Pronged Attack

“If my head weren't screwed on to my neck with these high quality bolts, I would probably lose the damn thing.” – Malcolm X

The key to winning any dispute, above all, is persistence. By standing your ground, you allow others to determine that you are absolutely unwilling to bolt from your principles, even when they are highly unethical and/or irrational. More importantly, even if they do not appreciate your moral sanctimony, they will still be forced to come to terms with your differing opinion, for it is only a matter of time before they grow tired of defending their own credibility. A lost cause is not one worth fighting, which is much of the reason that the United States is substantially winding down its military operations in Iraq. Neoconservative imperialists eventually grew unable, particularly by the time of the 2006 midterms, to put forward their theories without being met with uncontrollable guffaws and only semi-playful hissing. No doubt the present administration operates in awareness of the fact that its troop withdrawal and associated media spectacle could serve to remind the ideologically volatile public of what a certain party does when it has control of the military, incidentally causing an outrageously disproportionate amount of harm in regards to the “deficit,” which allegedly is a really important issue to a lot of overweight white people with a sudden bout of political motivation.

I've gone off on a tangent here, though, so let's get back to issue at hand, namely beating the shit out of your enemies. When being persistent and overly vulgar in sharing your independent (indie?) viewpoint, you also need to be fully aware at all times of the physical threat posed to you by those around you, and to always have basic techniques for self-defence ready to use once shit escalates to the next level. For example, perhaps someone asks you what you had for breakfast yesterday, but they have a spiteful look in their eyes, topped off with a grimace that is painful in its self-enjoyment. You should immediately punch them in the face, move back, and then go on as if nothing happened. What are they going to do, punch you back? That is a possibility, actually.

After following the advice presented here too literally, one may find themselves resting in a hospital, and should this happen to you it is wholly necessary that you follow these precautions:
a. Do not eat any medicine the doctors give you, unless they specify that it will cause sedation, hallucinations, and/or paranoia;
b. Do not eat any of the food provided in the hospital (vending machines excepted);
c. Do not sustain amicable interactions with any staff, who are trying to drug you so that you will begin worshiping the New World Order, praying in the direction of Mecca while drinking soy latte and feasting on tofu blocks, all in a largely successful attempt to distract you from the brainwashing that begins to take place as soon as you consume “paracetamol” or “oxybutynin” (among many others).

Begin to Fathom the Logic

“I just caught a plane from Denver, and boy, are my arms fucking killing me anyway.”

There are sights to see, places to be; people to find, which puts us in a bind. The deadline is looming over our heads like the beginning of a windy, destructive thunderstorm. As we get closer to our destination, it feels like we are only getting further away; frantically grasping at the map to figure out which incorrect turn we took about twenty-five minutes ago, when none of us were paying attention because we were all getting into a Pavement record while smoking cigarettes or something desperately credibility attaining yet patently ridiculous like that.

All good things come to an end, but bad things seem to linger on, outstaying their welcome and reminding you of it constantly. Some may consider this to be a cynical outlook, but when riding around in the Magic Machine with the space cadets, it is merely realistic. Terrible comments are coming from every direction, and aimed at every other direction. “You know, I could stab myself in the eyeball with a knife right now... hey, I could stab your eye, right now. Isn't that interesting?” Everyone takes a nervous drag, exhaling slowly in an ineffectual attempt to relax.

Eventually, we arrived to the Phoenix, Arizona Central Business District, and breathed a collective sigh of relief as we all knew that this was the moment when the true partying would manifest itself. I shot down some of the other suggestions (harassing Mormons, street art, heroin cinema) in lieu of checking out the Phoenix bar scene, knowing that there would be some pretty cool people there. Lo and behold, I was correct, and my friends were quite impressed: within ten minutes, we were all having thrilling conversations with young urban professionals.

It took us many weeks to get back home, because inevitably all of us got lost, phones long since smashed and laying in a water fountain, having a little bit too much fun with what would be, in retrospect, not necessarily the right kind of people. (Many of these people admitted to voting Republican, and nearly all of them possessed offensively over sized automobiles.) To make matters worse, all of us depleted our bank accounts on various life essentials (dental hygiene, illicit drugs, casino visits, Friday night pizza). It is not a pleasant thought to have to consider starting over life anew in the charming blob that is Phoenix. Of course, one of us contacted the old folks, who were willing to bail us out “for the last time, goddammit.”

Don't blame me for avoiding the beach, or camping trips, or the snow, or whatever the fuck else you over-privileged dickwads aspire to waste your weekends with. I've had enough of this directionless, ultimately pesky travel, and I can take it no longer. From now on, the most exotic thing I am ever doing is plugging in the video player to watch decayed VHS from the 90s. You can find me at home: eating biscuits, rarely engaging in movement, and gradually fulfilling my lifelong dream of morbid obesity.

Insurmountable Amounts of Sickness

I buy only organic fruits and vegetables with the money I earn from my job serving hamburgers, and on Earth Day, I walked to the bus stop instead of driving to work, and ended up sitting at the bus stop all day. Around 5 pm, I walked back. When I got home, I turned off the lights. I wrote a letter to my local newspaper about the poor bus services, which was probably filed into the shredder upon reception, if we are being generous (no one wants to have their carefully crafted bitch piece merely thrown in the bin, not even removed from its envelope).

Let me tell you about my problems, just in case that introduction there didn't really give much away. Nothing seems to work out, you know? It's a complete fucking mess. I will start at the beginning.

The Beginning

Rocky and I were driving around, looking for a good time (as is often the daily objective). Rocky was enjoying some ice cream, and I was polishing off my fifth beer, when we happened to come across a very friendly man who was stopping to talk to people in traffic with their windows down. Now, this wasn't just any two-bit schmuck asking for “spare change.” No, this man would become a very important factor in our lives. We just didn't know it yet.

He was willing to sell us ten dollars worth of amphetamines because he was quite desperate to purchase an alcoholic beverage. The desperation in his eyes was endearing to us, so we financed his drinking for the entirety of the evening, noting that ten bucks wasn't going to get us very far, especially since the sun had not even gone down yet. We both like to emphasise our shrewd sense of economic wisdom, and anyone worth their salt knows that making a $10 investment in speed is like going to a bar to drink lemon squash. Needless to say, we felt that we had made the right decision, and continued to drive along, making snarky comments about all of the ugly people in their ugly cars with their even uglier dogs.

Seventy-Two Hours Later (written immediately after the occurrences described)

Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit.

I hate cleaning up blood. Fuck. I asked Randy, who sold us the speed the other day, what to do. But he is not answering his phone. That little fucking prick. He ripped us off, too. Son of a fucking bitch.

Words cannot begin to describe how I feel about the entirety of this episode, except that Rocky looked a lot better before the head amputation. The sort of guy you would feel good about going out to town with, you know? These days, it's kind of a drag. But I don't have the heart to tell him.

I ended up getting to know Randy pretty well, incidentally, because he was in eager need of more cash and I was in need of more stimulants, and like the start of all good friendships, we could do little more than immediately acknowledge the inherent value that we could provide each other. Randy likes to do a lot of cleaning, especially at the beginning of the week, when he picks up litter around our streets. The second half of the week is not quite so dedicated to the public good, because Randy is acutely aware that if he does not smash beer bottles all over the next door cafe, he will not have anything to clean up come Monday. He usually sleeps in the second half of the week, as well.

In between pulling nearly invisible shards of glass out of my pants and cleaning the build-up from the pipe twice daily, I occasionally venture to the kitchen, where I find that Randy has not eaten anything since 1994, except possibly half of a packet of BBQ-flavour instant noodles.

I am in a rut. The vodka is causing me to parse my thoughts with even greater levels of anger and paranoia, but the deceiving sense of coherency only continues to build. It is the feeling one has at the beginning of an evening when they have decided that something terrible is going to happen, but they have not figured out who will instigate the badness. If no one else is willing to do it, then I will have to do it myself.

The kitchen is organised now, probably to a point of tidiness that it may never see again. The matches have been arranged with the intention of great quantity & great distribution. We are looking at something truly outrageous in the making, and the only thing that could possibly stop it would be interference from that conniving, seedy bastard Randall. Where, oh where, have you gone, Randall? It's only a Tuesday, and I know you don't sleep on Tuesdays.

Come out from where you are hiding, Randy. I want to see your facial expression as I extract my revenge on your filthy, hopeless “kitchen.” Never again shall you fancy the thought of boiling some water to make tea, only to keep sitting down, for now you shall not possess a functioning kettle. Eat shit, Randy, and thanks for the drugs.

Perception Damage with Ragin' Bender Jones

I cannot see properly; haven't been able to for four hours at least. The pre-sunrise frantic cleaning operation has begun, and I am not sure what I am doing, entirely, except that I am picking up items with my hands and then putting these items somewhere else, only to forget instantaneously what was just moved and its site of relocation. Completely, utterly useless. I'm quite sure that I knocked over some gigantic variety of potted plant when roaming through the backyard on my way back inside last night. I can't recall the details of all sorts of things on demand, but – well, I've got a hunch about this one. I definitely created a terrible mess. I'll go check.

No, I'm not going crazy (just permanently losing any sense of balance and coordination). I'm going to have to clean that up later, along with the stains in the sink. Do you think I enjoy this? Does this sound like a non-stop barrel of laughs to you? You have no idea how difficult I've got it, man. I didn't choose this. No one does, except those who are malicious and have nothing left to lose. In any other circumstance, saner heads would prevail. No, I definitely did not choose to live like this. Some might describe this decadence as an “anything goes-type situation” (AGTS) but everyone has their limits. Around here, we frown upon martinis before 11 am on Tuesdays, for example (though, admittedly, there is a sort of loophole available through sleeping in).

In moments of reflection I will find myself worrying about my own coherency and sensibility. Here I am, out-drinking all of my friends, and they come to me and start telling me the same story three or four times in the course of a meeting, sometimes with alarming proximity, and I have no idea whether to say anything or not. It's too late in the friendship to suddenly bring up some kind of embarrassing memory problem, but then that sort of honesty is useful because one can never critique their own performance accurately and objectively, and by opening a discourse which is transparent in its communication, one can learn details at a measured pace. This is usually preferable to the rush of information that may be dumped all at once, which can be followed by a stabbing rampage. (“What do you mean I've been forwarding you the exact same chain e-mail every two days since the middle of March, Bob? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?”)

Impulsive decision making can be the cause of further casualties in the AGTS. One moment, I am eight beers deep and passionately arguing for the necessity of stronger antitrust laws, and suddenly we are at a crack den, crushing up ADHD medication and playing the Beatles on vinyl because no one can agree on anything else. Then the host will inevitably announce, with the demeanor with which one might announce a funeral, that we have run out of boxed wine, unless of course you happen to be the host and his girlfriend, who will be retiring to the bedroom shortly to indulge in the treats available to no one else. A group of us may go on a walk to remedy our increasing sense of malaise, in the hope of procuring further intoxicants or maybe just do something stupid (because, hey, “anything goes”). Thirty-six hours later and the face bruises generally serve as a healthy reminder that I have chosen pretty much the worst hobby in the world, and I can't even begin to come up with a good explanation for what happened to my bank account balance.

There was one day last year that I did not consume any alcohol, and it proved to be a heinous decision of epic proportions: I was driving along the highway, maybe 30-40 km over the limit, when I fell asleep and veered off the side of the road, tipping the car over, igniting a fire, which incidentally woke me up again, so I got out of the car, and saved the canary, but did not have time to rescue the trio of puppies (I do not mention this to potential benefactors). To my credit, I was neglecting to answer a phone call at the exact moment of the accident; I hastened to inform the officers of this but they appeared uninterested. If the accident had been caused by drinking, perhaps I would have stable employment in the noble profession of giving patronising lectures to school children about the inevitable consequences of drinking and driving. Why, oh why, did it have to turn out like this?

Passing the Buck (Not My Problem)

Rodgers: What do you expect me to do; sweep and mop the floor? Do I really look like I have time for this?
Ulster: You look like you have all of the time in the world, Rodgers.
Rodgers: Hey, get bent, man. Ain't my fucking problem.

This is the sort of situation that could easily escalate into violence with the help of alcohol. Over here at the Friends & Family of Deceased Alcoholics Association and Preventative Network, where we finance completely unbiased research into methods of tackling the so-called binge drinking epidemic, we have come to a number of startling conclusions.

A.) The number of injuries and deaths related to alcohol could be seriously decreased with a few restrictive measures, like increasing the purchasing age limit, increasing the excise health taxes on alcohol products, and harsher penalties for convictions of violent, drunken behaviour. There are a few caveats, however; for example, though we want to tax alcohol in accordance to its social and medical toll, wine is a major industry over here, so we should probably just leave that completely alone. If we increase the taxes on only beer and spirits, binge drinking should be reduced by 50% in the first year of implementation. (What's missing, you might ask? The graphic photos of bloated livers, oral cancers, fried colons, etc. with simple and direct warnings, such as “DRINKING BEER AND/OR SPIRITS CAUSES LIVER CIRRHOSIS.”)

B.) The number of drunk drivers on our public roads is still far too high to be considered safe by even the most lenient of standards. Clearly, random breath-testing and pulling over reckless drivers is not enough; perhaps the frequency of random breath-testing should be increased, which can be paid for with another increase in beer and spirits taxes. More armed cops on the street, patrolling around to break up any booze-fueled brawls, paid for with yet another brand new vodka tax. Feel a little safer yet?

C.) The number of people who take alcohol consumption as a threat to society seriously is still not high enough to broadly change societal attitudes and habits towards alcohol. This is why we need to apply the immensely successful Tobacco Prevention Agenda, with alterations, to alcohol. Some reports are now saying that the cumulative effect from binge drinking on non-drinkers rivals that of the second-hand smoke emitted by a cigarette smoker fulfilling their hopeless, life-destroying addiction to nicotine. It is socially acceptable to walk up to a smoker and cough; and soon, it shall be quite similar to walk up to a drinker and spit in their filthy beer. People will finally come around to the simple fact that self-medication is not only unethical and dangerous, but also entirely unnecessary in the age of anti-depressants. See your doctor today.

Emotionally Independent Self-Empowerment

Nothing gets my goat more than someone becoming unreasonably upset;
Everyone seems to overreact to everything and my patience is limited.
I find no use in calming people and telling them not to fret.

They are all completely full of shit, in the end, and that's what you
Need to remember about them, because after all, nobody is looking
Out for you (they are all really mean jerks) so you should do.

Now that we have that little poem out of the way – it came to me as I was tending to the vegetable garden this morning, just a brisk stroke of literary, emotionally in-depth brilliance, and it would go really nicely with a good guitar riff, now that I think about it – it's time to focus on self-improvement, and more specifically, direct and measurable results from your efforts. You want results! You want action; you want change; you want hope; you want reform. You don't just want these things. You need them.

The first thing to always keep in mind is that the negative opinions of other people are irrelevant. Self-empowerment mandates that you ignore the criticisms of your friends and foes alike, who almost never have your best interests at heart. Through dedication and practice, you can succeed at whatever you want, and the detractions of others are entirely meaningless. As long as you believe in yourself, you will see results. Dedicated readers will appreciate that this has already been demonstrated thoroughly by a friend of mine named Rodney, whose emotionally independent self-empowerment techniques have allowed him to discard the insulting views of everyone around him, including those of law enforcement. “The law is just their opinion,” Rodney tells me.

People appreciate confidence. Even if they continue to insult you, mock you, and generally treat you poorly, when you exert confidence in all of your encounters they will eventually respect you. You can always gain someone's respect by being better than them. Always be the bigger man. You are what you act, and in the end, everyone is really acting, so act to be the best you can be. Of course, you need to practice. For example: you want to ask out someone on a date. The age-old advice of self-help gurus to “bang a bunch of other people with whom you feel no emotional attachment to instead to gear up your confidence” is still useful today. If someone rejects your offer, ignore their rejection through persistence (people appreciate persistence). If they do not find you attractive, they are lying to themselves; make sure they are aware of the truth.

Another key component in self-empowerment is to constantly try new things. Test your limits: date people twice your age; quadruple the number of days you wear underwear without washing it; eat cat food for lunch on a gloomy Wednesday; seek out to actually be informed before voting, etc. People will appreciate your open mindedness and ability to immerse yourself in different hobbies and cultures with a practiced sense of comfort. Most importantly, they will envy you, which will in turn possess them to attempt to seek a closer line of dialogue with you. If they are worth their salt, you can continue to keep the relationship going.

It is vital that you are conscious at all times of your status with other people, particularly those you value, but also others who you may need to use as pawns ('pawns' being those who one vaguely knows, enough to invite to a party, but not to stop and say hello on the street in daylight), so that you may manipulate the living shit out of people to suit your own needs. Tricking the masses is easy; spread hatred and/or misinformation, engaging in smear tactics (a lie need only repeated so many times to become truth, and sometimes insinuations are just as effective as outright lies, since they can be harder to deny). Lyndon B. Johnson once spread a rumor at the very end of a notorious congressional campaign that his primary opponent was sexually active with livestock, and the conversation with the adviser goes roughly like this: “We can't say that, there isn't even an ounce of evidence.” “Yes, but let's make the fucker deny it.” This is the sort of thing we are talking about (Johnson won the election, incidentally, and not without the help of some friendly county commissioners), or perhaps getting the many branches of the gigantic conglomeration of media outlets that you own to repeatedly report an otherwise barely existent flurry of controversy among the climatology community regarding the validity of modern climate change theory.

It is also possible to manipulate people individually. Let us suppose that you are hoping to forge a positive relationship, or enhance an existing one, with someone who seems to at first be non responsive. It is thus essential to create an aura of indispensability to surround your character. Slowly, as you become more and more essential to the daily function of the other person's life, they will be left no choice but to do exactly what you want them to do. If they show resistance of any kind, delay plans to increase the assertion of your authority until you can lull them back into a false sense of security. More about this fascinating topic, and just what how you can get exactly what you want, all of the time, is available whenever you come to my conferences, where I give you lectures accompanied with PowerPoint presentations. You will be absolutely blown away by the barrels of knowledge you will abandon the snazzy hotel function room keeping all for yourself. Now is the time to make the move, and treat yourself right – after all, who else is looking out for number one?

Throwing Wild Parties

When all is said and done, and you are rotting away in a retirement home, long since forgotten by all but your closest friends (and not even they are a safe bet), one thing you will be able to look back on is how, at the peak of your life, you were known for throwing a hell of a party. If people still remembered you, they would be constantly bothering you with solicitations for advice on how to ensure people have the wildly good times that you were once known for facilitating.

Sadly, though your once legendary parties are now a forever buried remnant of your spent past, future generations still have much to learn from your indulgent, hedonistic ways. I have taken the liberty of compiling some of your key strategies for partying in the hope that the obnoxious alcoholics of tomorrow will not be confused as to what to do in going about their chosen lifestyle path.

STEP ONE: FINANCIAL BACKING

Generally, when people inform you that having a good time does not necessarily cost money, they are hoping to deflect attention away from their empty wallets. If you have no cash, you should start looking to your friends immediately, either for direct financial support (which is preferable) or assistance in providing required items: beer, wine, spirits, chips, a glass pipe, and petroleum. The guests you invite to your party should hopefully also aid in the valiant effort by bringing their own alcohol supplies as well as illicit drugs.

STEP TWO: DECORATING

Many people tend to assume that decorating your home in preparation for a party can be quickly and easily accomplished. If you find this step to be particularly stress-free, you are certainly doing it incorrectly. Decorating does not merely mean covering the entire carpet in wine-resistant coating and putting up colourful banners and posters on random parts of your wall. You must also remember to hide all of your valuables (pro tip: no one ever checks the front yard, especially if it's raining). Experienced party throwers always know to lock up the fridge and pantry, and obscure the plentiful supply of toilet paper so that guests are more frugal with their wiping. You will also want to hide your towels.

STEP THREE: INVITATIONS

Invitations are often a complicated business, as you can never be entirely sure who of your average seeming acquaintances deserves to be invited into your humble abode. If you get extra selective in your invitation process, and the party turns out to be a flop, you feel like a total idiot; if you invite everyone you've ever had a thirty second conversation with, there's a great chance that those people will show up while your closer acquaintances will be busy exchanging bodily fluids in the privacy of a crumbling share house. You don't want either of these things to happen.

You will end up needing to go through your list of potential invitees individually, asking yourself the same question for each person: “How upset would I be if I found this person passed out naked on my couch in a pile of vomit just before I leave for work?” If the answer is “very upset,” you will want to reconsider what value this person will add to the intended atmosphere of your wild party.

STEP FOUR: FOOD

People who stand around drinking enormous amounts of alcohol rapidly while apparently engaging in conversation often experience a phenomenon known as 'munchies,' where their drunkenness leaves them with a voracious appetite that can only be cured by easy to prepare, popular, and generally unhealthy snack foods. People get more drunk if they have had less to eat prior to the commencement of their binge, so you will definitely want to hide any foodstuffs until a couple of hours into the party, in order to better facilitate the social comfortableness of those around you. You should probably stay ahead of the pack, on the other hand, and eat as filling and nourishing a meal as you possibly can. This gives you an enormous advantage much later in the evening when the frightening reality of sunrise occurring in a matter of mere hours begins to make everyone feel great amounts of sedated pain and despair.

STEP FIVE: DRINKING GAMES YOU'LL LOVE

The way to win over the populist sentiment at your gathering once a suitable number of players have arrived, of course, is to engage in heinous drinking games which force everyone to get ridiculously intoxicated. Here are a few classics:

* Wait until there is a long queue outside your bathroom door. Get a small group of people (5-7) and stand around the queue. Everyone takes a drink when you hear a flush. Everyone takes a drink when you hear the faucet being turned, implying that someone has just washed their hands. If someone does not wash their hands, the entire group gets to jump on the person in question as they exit the bathroom. This game encourages good hygiene and has the added benefit of being right next to the bathroom, where you and your friends will be spending a lot of quality time.

* Look for a group of smokers, probably situated in your backyard, and ask them for a cigarette. Tear up the cigarette and empty the tobacco into a bottle of vodka and let sit for two hours. Strain the tobacco from the vodka, mix it with soft drink, and serve it to anyone who looks like they have stayed inside for the entirety of the party. This is not so much a drinking game as it is a fun chance to watch people get very sick (remember, you get to clean up the mess later!).

* This game is an individual one, which you get to play on your own. Take a big swig of whatever alcoholic beverage of your choosing every time someone you have never seen before in your life comes up to you and says, “Dude, great party.” You may be able to get drunk simply playing this game and not drinking at other times. (If this is achievable, you have definitely “won.”)

STEP SIX: KICKING THESE ASSHOLES OUT

It's three in the morning. The police have already told you to stop making noise and start getting people home, and you are getting a little bit sick of all this bullshit, too, if you are being entirely honest with yourself. This is where a wondrous transition occurs: in one moment, you are friends with practically everyone who has invaded your home, and in the next, you are yelling at them all to get the fuck out right now or you'll start throwing broken bottles at them.

No matter how thorough your late-night purge, there will be stragglers. People will be found in all sorts of odd places, sleeping in highly amusing positions and making objectionable noises which prevent you from going close enough to them to check if they are still breathing. Occasionally you will find a completely silent body, and you will lean up to it to not only find that it is alive but also smells worse than your bathroom, which has had an incredible stench of projectile red wine vomit for about two hours now. The best strategy for your stragglers is to wait until you rise the next day – the chances are they will feel embarrassed and either leave without saying anything or stick around and help clean up.

STEP SEVEN: THE PROPAGANDA WAR

Finally, you need to win the propaganda war. A party is only as fun and exciting as it is made to seem on Facebook, and to win this particular social game you will need a camera as well as a willingness to take literally hundreds of mostly uninteresting photos. From this collection of photos you will remove the blurry, hopelessly mundane, and personally embarrassing, and subsequently upload the rest of them to your profile page, where you must then go through each photo and tag every single person in every single photo. This ensures that your party photos show up on a large number of other people's profiles, and people simply browsing a friend's profile will take note of their friend's attendance at this seemingly wild party where he features in half a dozen totally wacky photos. Everyone loves proof of shenanigans and hijinks, and more importantly, when your brain begins to finally show noticeable memory impairment due to years of heavy chronic alcohol abuse, you will still have your photos to remind you of what a great party you were capable of hosting.

And so, to all of those in tomorrow's generations who are preparing for a long livelihood of barely making ends meet while not actually doing anything productive, I hope you have found this advice helpful. One day you, too, will be rotting away in a retirement home and lamenting on your inability to steer society's youth in the wrong direction. Godspeed and God bless!