"Gotta have some of this," the man slags his quart of Milwaukee's Mediocre Beer upon the counter.
"Yeah," I glance at his umpire outfit. "God forbid you have to live through nine whole Little League innings sober."
"Can I have that in a nice, tight bag, good for disguising this as a Coke, the cops'll never figure it out?"
"Sure," I say to the next man who has slagged his can of beer on the counter. I don't bother saying that people who are drinking cola rarely drink it from a bag. I don't bother pointing out that the man has just asked me to help him commit a crime. I just say:
"God forbid you have to go the entire half mile to your shed without sucking on your surrogate nipple."
God forbid.
"God forbid I clean the men's room," I said to the district manager who recently joyed me with his presence. "I mean, I would, but my conscience will not allow me to endanger my stomach's delicate acid level balance for the paltry monetary compensation you have the demented bad humor to call wages."
I expect - hope, rather - to get sacked. Instead:
"Damn. Them's a lot of big words you used."
Sarcasm, I have learned, is lost on so many people.
And that's it. I'm leaving. I'm outta here. I don't care who they get to replace me - let em dig up this M.P. Madden guy, the one responsible for the stink in the left pocket of this filthy smock, and let them prop his corpse up by the register.
Nine out of ten customers wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
So I quit. Bye-bye.
[Editor's note: The rest of this rant, mainly railings against Hamm for Hamm's sending Jay off on a quest to "take these cigarettes out to the intelligent customer's house, no really I swear there is one...", was unprintable. Not obscene, but unprintable; apparently both Jay and Hamm speak a little known dialect of Mandarin Chinese and I can't make the Web do the characters reliably. Therefore, to fill space, here is the last thing Jay e-mailed me. I don't know if he wanted me to print it or not; it's a short story of his he thought would amuse me. Look for the cameo by Macauly Culkin.]
A small army of Parazzini Brothers plumbers, each duly armed with gas mask, plunger and huge rubber boots, clomped into the hallowed hallways of the monastery.
"Funny," Danny Parazzini said. "I don't remember this place having a moat."
Joey Parazzini shook his head. "That wasn't a moat."
Danny blanched. The youngest Parazinni, he'd not yet become battle-hardened, not yet accustomed to the cripe that, in his eldest brother's words, "is the butter on our bread."
"So what happened?" Joey turned to one of the white-robed monks.
Brother Frank sighed. "It's a long, long story."
After the fifth consecutive hour of grunting and groaning, Brother Frank Kaplan of the Order of Holy Cripe had decided to follow advice given to him many years ago by his father: poop or get off the pot.
Frank got off the pot. Miserably. The Order of the Holy Cripe believed there were three levels of happiness. Third most important, eating. Second, sex. But great happiness - true, lasting spiritual satisfaction - came only from a Truly Great Bowel movement. One so nirvanic that the entire soul would resonate with sweet visceral release, such that all life experiences afterwards would be handled in the serene manner of someone who knew eternal bliss.
Brother Frank turned round, faced the empty waters of his majestic throne. Like the other monks at the monastery, Frank lived in a room the size of a men's room stall, slept on a straw mat, ate plenty of fiber, and had a toilet worth more than some small European countries.
He grasped the golden handle and flushed. The walls were thin as cardboard, and he didn't want the other monks to know the awful truth.
Frank had been constipated for over three days now.
The Master knew. Every night, the master made his rounds to the rooms, to sniff. He was that good - he didn't need to actually see the monks' progress; by the aftersmell alone, the Master could tell how close the monk was to enlightenment.
And it was six p.m. Two more hours till the Master arrived. Frank donned his triple ply robe, quilted not for decoration but absorbency, and headed out.
"I want," Brother Frank said to the clerk at Venn Video Rental, "something that will scare the crap out of me. Literally."
"Cheerleaders Burn in Hell Tonight didn't do it?"
"No."
"I Barf on Your Grave?"
"Not a whit."
The clerk raised a fuzzy grey eyebrow. "Hell Cheerleaders 2 - that had to help, right?"
Frank shook his head. "Why did you recommend that? It was about as scary as watching a sock puppet chase people around. Which, if I'm not mistaken, was exactly what the monster was."
"The acting, son. Not the effects. In some scenes, you could actually see the cue cards. Think about it - people actually spent good money making that thing. That doesn't make you wanna gnaw off your nose?"
Frank shrugged, then waved off the clerk's offers of Hell Cheerleaders Part 8, Cyborg Motorcycle Sex Kittens, and Home Alone 2. "Listen," he said, "is there a drugstore within walking distance of here?"
The Order of Holy Cripe frowned on drugs. Marajuana, LSD, and, most severely, Ex-Lax. In fact, right after taking his vows of poverty, chastity and flatulence, Frank had sworn never to touch the stuff he now held in his trembling hands.
The Master might excommunicate him, if the Master found out. But as Frank stood in aisle eight, his intestines aching with three day's worth of backlog, he saw no other option.
"Poop or get off the pot," his father had said. It was time for Frank to hitch up his boots, pull down his pants and ride the pot into the sunset.
Despite having over three hundred toilets, the monastery had not a single plunger. And by eight p.m., though he had barely begun, it was already apparent Frank was gonna need one.
The Master, in an unprecedented move, interrupted his Evening Movement to check out the smell emanating from Frank's room. "Wipe gently," he said, their traditional greeting, as he entered Frank's room. "Ahh," he sniffed, "smells heavenly."
Frank keeled off the pot, onto the tile floor, his mind awash in squidgy brown bliss. "Master," he moaned, "master..." He glanced behind himself briefly, making sure his robe still hid the eight empty Ex-Lax boxes. "I have sinned..."
The Master smiled. "My child, I know you have long held your iniquities inside you. But tonight, your are cleansed. And look! The fruits of your labor have produced a great gift!"
Frank crawled to the bowl, heaved his chin upon the rim. There, it was, clear as day, spelled out in the pile: MOOG.
"Moooog," Frank mouthed. "Mooooog," he curled his lips about, liking the way the word caused his chin to vibrate.
"Moog." If Frank ever owned a purple, winged cow, he'd name it Moog. Other than that, the word's definition was mystery. "What's the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"It is a sign." The Master closed Frank's door. "It is part of the prophecy," he whispered. "You see, I am old. It had been many years since I had a Truly Great Movement - in fact, I have not had an honest movement in over two months."
The Master reached into his robe, pulled out a grotty, molded cardboard tube. "I am no longer worthy of the Roll of Honor. The truth is, I have been using the lax for quite awhile now. But you..." The Master beamed.
Frank tried to push away the Honor Roll. "I assure you, I am not worthy either..."
The Master wouldn't hear of it. Smiling weakly, Frank accepted the Roll.
"Hmmm," Frank sniffed three days later. "You're, um, having a problem with... some girl you're secretly still in love with?"
Brother Tom shook his head. "Not even close."
"You, ah, can't relax cause your cat doesn't know you're gay, perhaps?"
Brother Tom rolled his eyes. "Are you certain the Master named you the new Master?"
"Sorry," Frank shrugged, and moved on.
He'd been saying that a lot lately. Yesterday, for example - Brother Zed got sprayed by a skunk, and Frank mistook it for a brush with nirvana. And Cheever, the cook, had made cabbage for dinner, and Frank thought Cheever's ex-wife must have finally stopped hounding him.
And late that night, after another horribly unscentsessful session, Frank lay upon his straw mat and contemplated everything. "Oh, Honor Roll,' he whispered softly as he petted the cardboard tube, "I am not worthy of you. But how can I get out of this without admitting I broke my vows?"
The next night, Frank had an idea.
The monastery was dark and quiet as Frank stood in the kitchen, bent over a huge pot of Cheever's chocolate pudding. How much should Frank put in? One package? Three?
Frank settled on one. As he stirred the Ex-Lax in, he imagined all the monks tomorrow having an extremely productive day. Extremely productive.
So productive, in fact, that someone would have to investigate. Then they would find the empty Ex-Lax boxes in the trash, and Frank would be freed. "Someone's been spiking the pudding?" he'd exclaim. "No wonder I did so well the other day!" And then he'd resign - "I am an honorable man, you know. And if there's even a chance that I had an Artificial Movement, then I feel it's only right I relinquish my power back to the true Master..."
The next day, Frank noticed everyone a bit more loose and relaxed than usual, but not enough to make anyone wonder. He next tried three boxes, followed by six, then eight. Nothing. No change. The usual b.s.
Finally, in desperation, Frank dumped an entire case's worth of Ex-Lax into the pudding. Not only did it work, but the Order of the Holy Cripe, for the first time in over a century, found themselves putting out the collection plate.
The Parazzini Brothers, as they were quick to point out, didn't work for free. In fact, after The Great Flood, as it would later be known, the Parazzini Brothers would retire.
"Man," Joey shook his head as he began battle with the first of the hundred overflowing thrones. "Enlightenment, through this? Sounds like a load of crap to me."