The Usual Dosage

You have an average of seventy four years to make something important happen.

You’d better hurry, because the odds are, you’ve already spent almost half of those years and you haven’t made your impact where you wanted to. On the flip side of the coin, you probably have actually made a huge difference in the life of someone but you’ve failed, time and time again, to give a shit about what you’ve done for other people. It’s the tragedy within your human nature. Though you fulfill others you still thirst for your own happiness. It’s not just you. It’s everyone. But we’re talking about you here.

It’s not going to come, though, so you should just fucking forget it.

I haven’t thought about it in seconds.

You seek, you strive and you don’t yield: Tennyson said that and it made a great deal of sense, but still you sit with your head in your hands at the end of the day, missing something. Not knowing what’s missing, you take a drink of wine, a shot of whiskey; two, three, five, seven, eleven. Drink to the prime. It doesn’t seem to have an effect, except to make you more emotional and withdrawn.

I’m more sensitive this way. Things make sense.

It’s a hot, white sickness. You stretch and breathe and squint your eyes against the bright fluorescent lights. You rub your hands on your oily face and squeeze your eyes but your mouth takes like vomit and you’re not any closer to finding the right path.

I’d be sick if I didn’t do this every night.

There’s no God in that bottle, love. He’s not there, but you’re going to look for him anyway, aren’t you, love?

I’ll find Him somewhere.

Everyone eats some of their demons, and you’ve eaten your fair share. When something makes you feel good you consume it. Happiness has to be nearby, it just has to because everyone else is happy, aren’t they? It has to be close by.

But then you wake up and the happiness is replaced with a skull filled with sawdust and eyes filled with fine sand. You’ve been in a fight but you’re the only one who threw punches.

God, I feel like shit today.

There’s this longing and it won’t leave you alone. Everyone around you is an antagonist, aren’t they? You spar with them verbally, never truly enjoying anyone’s company. Who’s the next person that will take a swing at you? Who is the next person that will challenge The King?

But you won’t come down from your tower for anyone, will you, love?

I don’t compromise for anyone.

It’s time to go. It’s time to find your usual dosage. It’s just the same drug you always take. It’s a gentle lover and it doesn’t need you to apologize. It doesn’t need you to be responsible. You can fall away into it, and it will always love you. It’s a sexy witness to your suffering.

Why am I always so sad?

You’re probably fucked up in the head like the rest of us, love. It’s not your fault, though, remember. It’s society, or your parents, or your school, or the fact that you don’t get laid much, or the fact that you play video games. Nothing’s your fault, love.

It takes you a while to find the right music for the occasion, doesn’t it? But once you find it you know. Maybe it’s Portishead. Maybe it’s Stabbing Westward. Maybe it’s Cold. Maybe it’s The Cure. Maybe it’s Blue October.

We all cry to different music.

I cry to everything these days.

Listen to the songs you can’t sing, but wish you could. Your vision is narrowing, so it won’t be long now. Stumble in and fall into the abyss. The happy drugs flow through your veins and you’re numb now. You feel better than you ever have. Before you go out, you’ll write some cryptic, pseudo-intellectual Facebook posts and you’ll be off to Neverland. It’ll be lovely.

I don’t want to sleep yet.

Oh, but you have to, love, you’re so tired.

If you wake up tomorrow, you get to take your medicine again. You get to think about what you’re never going to do. Get yourself a nice cold beer. Drink yourself away. Celebrate nothing.

There’s that music again.

Shhhhh, now, love. It won’t be much longer.

He’s ready for the end.

He’s got bags of rice in plastic bags that are watertight. He’s got a couple of heavy duty black, wheeled Rubbermaid boxes full of camping gear, towels, canned food, mechanical tools and propane. He keeps water stocked in his garage at all times: at least three gallons worth.

He’s got some big ol’ guns.

Maybe it’ll come from North Korea, he thinks.

He has new tires on a four-wheel drive pickup truck that is perfect for post-apocalyptic survival. It has room for four, GPS, satellite radio and a can of gas in the bed. Underneath the seats he’s put quarts of oil, some extra mechanical tools, plastic bags and ammo. He works out every day to keep sharp and focused.

In his truck he’s got some big ol’ guns.

Could be some kind of flu outbreak, he thinks.

He has a camouflage backpack from his time in the military that holds a green plastic canteen full of fresh water. Inside he also has a first aid kit, a couple of bottles of penicillin, a Ka-Bar fighting knife made in Olean, New York. He has some rope and a few boxes of ammunition. He has extra ammunition inside some old green military surplus .50 caliber ammunition cans.

It’s for his big ol’ guns.

Wonder if it’ll be a electro-magnetic pulse from Russia, he thinks.

He has an escape plan from the city. He knows the roads to take to flee if the town is burning or otherwise succumbing. He has maps and a Chinese military compass he traded a serviceman for while he was in. He knows how to navigate over land and water because his father taught him how to when he was a kid. He knows how to find game.

He can kill with his big ol’ guns.

Likely it’ll be a comet, asteroid or meteor that hits us, he thinks.

He’s steeled himself for tough days ahead. He is determined. He is prepared. He is the definition of the motto of the Boy Scouts of America, which he was when he was a boy. He knows how to protect his family. He has gone over the plans of finding water, generating electricity and building shelters hundreds of times in his head. He has books that instruct how to do all the things he can’t remember.

He’s got some big ol’ guns.

The Chinese will invade us, he thinks.

He reminisces about a time before all this technology. He remembers quiet nights in the woods when he was a kid with no lights or noise. He thinks about the two and three week camping trips he went on as a kid and how he learned to survive off the land. He thinks an America with no lights or technology might not be all that bad.

He dies in his sleep.

The new AIG CEO is fightin’ mad. Sitting atop his fortress overlooking the Adriatic, this guy, the former CEO of MetLife, retired from MetLife in 2006, and was invited back into the insurance game very recently. He’s slamming “lynch mob” style attacks on AIG’s cred, or, more specifically, AIG’s grossly overpaid executives who, with their company, took huge draughts from the public tit after nearly collapsing last year.

Ok, so this guy may be a really great CEO. However, his primary argument is that he can “work from [his house in Croatia] as well as any office in New York”. That’d be great if it were true, but anyone who has telecommuted knows it’s a bunch of bullshit. There’s no exchange for “face time”, that time you get to be present, in the room with people. True leaders need to be amongst their followers, not a zillion miles away in a vastly different time zone.

So, this guy is calling us a “lynch mob with pitchforks”. Guess what? As a shareholder and taxpayer, you’re damn right I’m holding a pitchfork. So, I say this to Mr. Benmosche: “You better make good on my investment, or face the mob…”