Alien Night Club - Show 20?
Alien Night Club <the transcripts>
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Hello, hello, hello!
Show 20!
Show 20?
I literally – Jeremy Clarkson voice – literally have NO idea. We skipped some, combined some. It could be anything. I’d say we could be off by as much as 20%.
But anyway, welcome. Welcome to the Alien Night Club. I am your host, Captain Blank, semitrepid as always. Let’s change that. From now on I am going to say your–
Wait.
Let me think. I don’t think I want to say what I was going to say.
Let’s come back to it.
Would it be semi trepid, with a long i? Semm-i? Or semm-ee? With a long e sound?
Doesn’t matter. No one cares. People don’t care SO much, that I’m starting not to care. And I used to care. About a lot of stuff. But, a lot of that stuff, I have stopped caring. It became clear to me that it was pointless. People are fuckin lazy and usually don’t care if they’re doing something incorrectly.
So fuck it.
I’m tired of getting angry when I am going to watch a movie and the description for the movie has typos. Or uses the word aircrafts.
Instead of aircraft.
We’ve talked about this.
And yet I don’t seem to be able to get off it.
Maybe I do care. Maybe I still do.
Unfortunately.
For me.
Because no one else gives a fuck. I just find it shocking that there wasn’t a person in charge of getting that movie’s description up onto the server where the movie is hosted, or wherever they’re hosting that metadata; whatever; doesn’t matter. The point is not where it’s stored, the point is that someone sat at a computer and typed that shit in. Someone wrote that. Someone in a public-facing role. Whose work was, literally, Jeremy Clarkson, literally going to be seen by, again, Jeremy Clarkson, not hyperbolic at all, literally millions of people. They had to craft that description. And they didn’t know aircrafts is wrong. And there was no one working with them or above them to proofread their work before it went live. And if there was such a person, they either didn’t proofread the description or they did and they, too, thought aircrafts is correct.
And, ever since then, SURELY somebody must have gotten in touch with that person or those people and told them that aircrafts is wrong and it makes the whole platform look amateur as fuck. And, I’m sorry, but it’s much like their rocket program. Very different from the company going to actual, verified, undeniable SPACE and to the friggin space station. THE one and only space station. Well, there are more now but at the time this all began, there weren’t; there was only one company able to take people and food and supplies and experiments up to the space station so those people could park, knock on the door, and go inside.
Granted, that’s a huge feat. But it’s comprised of millions of tiny feats. Like engineers building all kinds of cool shit with their badass software on their sweet-ass computer. And then that design being built with actual stuff I-R-L. And it comes down to people turning wrenches. And welders welding. People actually putting this piece into that piece and connecting them together really, really hard and strongly with a whole bunch of nuts and bolts or rivets or welds or whatever process is called for for the union of those two particular parts. Because those two particular parts must never, EVER come apart or fail in any way. Lives, actual human lives, depend on that.
Which is one of the reasons why Space is hard.
That’s what they say.
By the way, is that a tee shirt yet? Space is Hard. I would think it is but if it’s not, that bad boy is going in the merch store.
Point being that Space is hard. It is difficult. It’s crazy trying to build something that is going to fly up to and into space where it will function perfectly forprettymuchever.
That’s one word, by the way: forprettymuchever. It’s saying pretty much forever in a different order and then saying it all very quickly as one word: forprettymuchever.
SB? Good evening and, if you would be so kind as to bless us with your sexy sound and unique insights I adore, take it away.
SB: Thank you, Captain. I appreciate and enjoy your insights, too. And I appreciate the insights of the four sexycool sons of a gun sitting right over yonder, ready to regale us with yet another of their smooth, delectable, chocolatey sounds. Ladies and gentlemen, friends around the galaxy and beyond, close your eyes and tell your earholes to get ready for some of the hottest, fudgiest, chocolateyest hot fudge they’ve ever had. Because now, here, live, in the flesh and for our fudgy enjoyment are The Hot Fudge Sundaes doing their very latest hit song titled Forprettymuchever. It’s about a woman named Pretty who finally gets everything she ever wanted. I’m not sure how I know that because I haven’t heard the song yet. I just know from the title that that is what this particular song is about. Please…enjoy. Fellas, take it away….
{musical interlude}
Thank you, thank you, thank you, gentlemen. That was the life-giving nectar my soul needed before I even knew that it needed it.
Deep breath. Big sigh.
Where were we?
Space is hard. That’s what they say. There’s a joke, too: How do you make a small fortune in Space?
Start with a large one.
Buh-DUMP-bump chhhhhhh!
Point being, whose rocket do you want to get on? The one where the buck stops with the guy who works 150 hours a week? Or the guy who doesn’t seem to give a shit that it says aircrafts on his fuckin website?
I know which one I’m strapping into if I ever do. If the opportunity ever arises. It’ll be hard to top this, though. That’s for sure. Exotic, non-hypergolic means of propulsion notwithstanding.
Anyway, again, welcome to the show.
Show 20.
Or is it?
That never gets old.
Knock on wood.
Anyway, I was going to talk about Mondays before I got on my rant about spelling and rockets. Which I do think turned out to be a valid point. But let’s move on.
First, Monday. Then…show notes. Of which there are a few. Including vampires. Always a tasty subject.
Okay, so: Monday.
Mondays to be more accurate. Not just the day of the week in and of itself which of course we all know to be innocuous. It doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just the name for THAT day, named by whomever named it whenever they named it. It was done a long, long time ago. I think it was the Babylonians who named it after the Moon. Luna. Which is why in French, Monday is Lundi. As in Luna. So Monday is Moonday. Just think: If we’d put the second Oh back in, it would make everyone think of the Moon instead of getting up and going to shitty work.
But, for clarity, would you rather get up and go to shitty work or would you rather lose your job and have to deal with finding another one?
Point being that Monday is one thing; Mondays is something else.
Because we all know what Mondays means. It means getting up and goin to work. That’s what it means. And for a lot of people, that shit SUCKS. Unless you’re a vampire brain surgeon. But we’ll get to that.
So, TLDR, if you are a person who hates and dreads Mondays, do something about it. Get cranking on your side hustle so you can monetize it and use it to replace the income from your day job.
That is the answer.
That is what you need to do.
Go hard at it for 6 months or a year and make it happen. With your spouse stroke significant other or others and perhaps even your whole family. Because you need their support. Their blessing. Maybe even their actual physical help. Because without that, you’re going to be struggling alone and will eventually become resentful toward them. Especially if you fail.
And we don’t want that. We want you to succeed. So get your family involved. It will be better that way. And therefore far more likely to succeed.
Also, while you’re doing all of that, create a routine that you actually like. Start your day the way YOU want to start it. I like to begin by working out. I give myself at least an hour to get my workout in. I need that much time so I don’t feel rushed. Ideally ninety minutes. That way, I can really get into it and focus properly. On days I completely fuck it all up and have, like, 45 minutes to train, including a 15-minute warm-up, that pisses me off. I’m JUST getting warmed up and into the groove when the timer goes off and I have to stop.
So, whatever it is, give yourself enough time. A time in which you’re actually going and doing something. Something BEFORE you go to shit-ass work. Before you get in your car and drive to the office or wherever it is you have to go to quote unquote work. By spending a couple of hours BEFORE work engaged in an activity of YOUR choosing, you will feel much, much more in control of your life and you will therefore feel much, much better about your circumstances. And that will put you in a good mood for when you do go to work. Because if you go in there all pissed off, everyone is going to see it. And, eventually, they will talk about what a cranky dick you are. Which will filter up to the powers that be and said powers will come and let your ass go.
Then what?
Now you’re REALLY fucked. Because, again, having a job you hate is better than having no job at all. Because you can always find a way to make it suck less. And because at least you have money coming in. You are paying the bills. You are making ends meet. Hopefully. For the most part. Probably not to the extent that you would like to be. You’re probably not island shopping just yet. Probably not gonna start chartering jets so you can see which jet you like the best so you know which one to BUY.
So that’s the first thing: do something BEFORE work for YOU so you can be happy and not a total a-hole at work.
And if that thing is working out, which for a whole lot of successful people it is, it will also have the added benefit of making you feel better. Physically and mentally. Probably not too much at first because you’ll be busy figuring out what to do and the logistics of it. But once you get on some kind of program and you get a couple of months into it, you’ll get into a groove. And that’s when you really start to notice things: your body is changing. You have muscles where you didn’t have them before. You have less fat where there has always been fat. Your appetite will probably change. You’ll likely stop wanting to eat some of your favorite foods; i.e. your favorite JUNK foods. That’s a big one.
Because, as soon as you start working out hard, you want some frickin results from all that frickin work. And you get kinda pissed because you already KNOW that the results won’t show all that much if you continue eating like crap. Because it’s nigh impossible to out-train a poor diet. Michael Phelps was able to do it because he was in cold water eight hours a day preparing for the Olympics. You’re not going to be doing that. But you can go for a long run and burn a thousand calories and then come home, eat four pieces of pizza and a salad drowning in Ranch and wind up in a caloric surplus in about twenty minutes. Despite that run.
But if you clean things up and start eating mostly protein and vegetables and you start tracking your metrics like your weight and bodyfat and macros and calories, you will see results very quickly. And then it becomes addictive. Because now you see that you actually CAN do it. It CAN be done.
But getting back to morning routines, I met a guy once who had a high-stress job. So he’d wake up super early, walk down the hall to his office, get high as fuck and play video games, and relax for a couple of hours. Then, by the time he was strolling into the office, he was strolling. He wasn’t high anymore and he was relaxed. Calm. He wasn’t rushing in carrying too much shit, not able to enjoy the coffee in his hand. He’s already had 3 cups. He’s already had FUN today. A LOT of fun. And now coming into the office is kind of like an afterthought. Just a place he has to go check in for a few hours, do a few things real quick, have lunch, hang out a bit longer to do a few more things and help the other people there plan some stuff. Then he gets to go home. Probably take another hit, get high again. Maybe not, depending on family responsibilities and stuff. But maybe.
The point is that he was living life HIS way. He was prioritizing HIMSELF. Not that job. Remember the joke about the guy who sees his boss getting out of a supercar and he says, Nice car. And the boss goes, Thanks; if you work REALLY, REALLY hard, like, REALLY hard, then, next year…I can buy another one.
Don’t be that guy. Be the guy – or girl or whatever; no offense intended – who is DRIVING the cool car; not the person working their ass off in the other person’s company to help build that person’s dreams so they can drive a cool car.
Get on that side hustle so in a few years YOU can be whipping around in the car you’ve always wanted. But only after you’re debt-free and have a home and a nest egg so you’re economically independent.
So there’s that.
Also, if you like to drink, you may find that you don’t want to or can’t once you begin working out. And I mean REALLY working out. And you KNOW if you’re REALLY working out. If you go in there and you kick some ass and you know what you’re doing and you have bodyparts and exercises all lined up in your mind or on your phone or in an actual notebook you write in by hand, and you execute that shit and you are breathing hard and sweating your ass off and you barely have time to stand there and look around the gym to see what else is going on because you’re too busy trying to recover, to get your breath back, before you have to do your next set…
If you’re doing that, you’re not going to be able to get hammered multiple times per week. It just doesn’t work. Plus, it’s buttloads of calories. And you could get rhabdo. So good luck with that.
And if you’re a drinker and you have a problem and you know it, and quite likely lots of other people know it, too, then it’s time to flip that switch. Imagine a light switch in your mind. Now, imagine that light switch is in a room you go to in your mind when you feel like drinking. Where is that room and what else is in there? And, more importantly – most importantly – what ISN’T in there? Who or what ISN’T in that room? And what does that tell you about why you go in there and about those things or people who aren’t allowed in there?
So if you want to stop drinking, go in there, turn out the lights, close the door, and leave. Go into a different room. Maybe the workout room. Or the guitar room. Or the ballet room. Or the yoga room. Or the meditation room. Or the running room. The biking room. The spin class room. Sculpture. Painting. Drawing. Digital art. Making YouTube videos. The reading room. Where you go to read. The movie room. Where you go to watch movies. Or maybe even to make movies. If you know how to do that, go do it. Start doing it. Or get back to doing it. Create something. The alcohol can wait. It’ll be there when the time is right. But getting hammered every night isn’t right. That’s not the right timing. That’s you medicating yourself or distracting yourself from something you don’t want to think about. Maybe have a conversation with someone about that thing you so desperately DON’T want to think about that you’re willing to be a well-known alcoholic because of it.
And then either find a way to not hate it…or go do something else. It’s fine. The world will go on. It’s going to go on no matter what. So you may as well be doing something you don’t hate. So you can go to bed Sunday night and feel no dread. Rather, you can look forward to waking up in the morning because you’re going to do something FUN. That’s how YOU’RE going to start YOUR day.
Did you know that most heart attacks occur on Monday morning?
What does that tell you?
It means people would rather have a freaking heart attack than go to work.
Remember what Jerry Seinfeld said about public speaking? He said a poll was done and the powers that be figured out that people’s #1 biggest fear is public speaking. And death was #2. Jerry voice: Death was number two! Which means if you’re going to a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.
Genius.
Utter genius. So true.
Similarly with the heart attacks on Monday morning. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? These people hate their job, maybe even their LIFE, SO much that they would rather have a heart attack and maybe DIE than deal with all the bullshit of another Monday and another week.
It’s THAT bad.
If that’s you, please, PLEASE, I beg you, DO something about it. Make some changes. No one wants to see you have a heart attack and almost die. You don’t need to go to the hospital and be on thin ice, circling the drain for several hours or days, with the doctors telling your family things are really touch and go right now, in order to convey to everyone that you don’t want to do your job any more.
You don’t have to do that.
Just have the conversation. Don’t wait until Monday morning when the pressure and stress is there, staring you in the face, before you go to whomever you need to go to and have the conversation. Maybe do it Thursday or Friday or Wednesday, at a point when you’re feeling okay, more yourself, more calm, less stressed out and frantic.
Maybe the person you need to talk to is your boss. Take em to breakfast and lay it all out. Be totally, brutally honest: that you fucking hate what you do and they either need to work with you to reshape your job…or you are quitting, whether that be there and then in that moment or in a couple of weeks so that they can hire someone else to do your job and you can train them before you get the fuck outta Dodge.
Especially if money isn’t the issue. If you could survive financially without that job but you continue doing it, what are you doing?
Quit.
As soon as possible.
And remake your life the way YOU want it to be.
That doesn’t mean getting a divorce and abandoning your family, by the way. You guys ever read Men, Women, and Children? They made a movie about it. Which was good. But the subject matter was such that there was a lot of important stuff in the book that couldn’t really be conveyed adequately onscreen.
Point being that you should love your life. If you don’t, figure out why. And then do something about it. And it’s probably going to take work.
Actual work.
Especially if your main thing is your fat. All that fat on your body. If you hate the way you look in the mirror and the way your fat rolls squish up when you sit down or when you’re putting on your socks, do something about it. If you can’t see your genitals because your belly is in the way, do something about it. And don’t use age or mobility as an excuse and as a way to lie to yourself.
By the way, tackling issues such as your suck job and your fat rolls will do wonders for your anxiety. Anxiety is almost entirely in your mind. It’s your negative self-talk out of control. Unless you or a loved one is in a serious medical dilemma of some kind, in which case that is a legitimate threat, then there’s a good chance that your anxiety is self-inflicted. It’s death by a thousand cuts and you’re the one holding the goddamn knife.
Put it down.
Stop cutting.
You’re not Kristen Bell playing Maggie Cutter, PhD.
Once you get into action and are taking regular, constant steps toward making progress, you’ll feel better. And a lot of that anxiety will go away.
Because your anxiety is like a hand. A giant hand. And it’s pinning you down. Preventing you from doing things that you want to do. And it’s terrible. And the irony is that that is your hand. You are doing it to yourself. You’re telling yourself a story in your mind about how dreadful and awful things are. That something you haff to do – that’s haff, not have – something you haff to do is really, really bad. And it’s really, really scary. And you really, really don’t want to do it.
But 99% of that is a lie. It’s not real. It’s all in your mind. And you are behaving as though it is true.
But it’s not.
Realizing this could also completely change your attitude toward your job, by the way. The one you hate. Maybe it’s not that bad but you’ve convinced yourself it is so you don’t haff to do it.
It’s like that old adage or expression or saying about what fear stands for. The word fear. If you break it down as an acronym, it stands for something else. An acronym is a word made up of letters and each letter stands for another word. The best example I know of is scuba. S-C-U-B-A. Which stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.
And fear, F-E-A-R, stands for False Evidence Appearing Real.
But it’s not real. You’re making it real.
Which means you can stop making it real. You have the power. The power is yours. It always has been. And it always will be.
SB, I think I hear the boys warming up to amaze us with another number.
SB: You most certainly do, Captain. Ladies and gentleman, here now to blow our doors off and ramrod our earholes – I have no idea what that means – it’s The Hot Fudge Sundaes performing a pretty little yet very rocky ditty called It Always Has Been and Always Will Be, and I pray to God it ain’t about slavery because I will gouge out your eyeballs and eat them and then rip your balls off and eat them, too, before I allow someone to put me in chains. No, no, no, don’t try to put me in chains. No, no, no, we will never go back out in that rain. Anyway, hit it, fellas.
{musical interlude}
Very nice. Very nice. Very nice. Somehow, every new song is better than the last one. I don’t know how they do it. That guitar was…otherworldly. Which makes sense, I suppose, given that we are on a spaceship. Still not sure I’ve fully internalized that.
Hendrix, Frusciante, Navarro, and the Edge. Those are some of my favorite guitarists. Who are your favorites?
Birds. I just remembered: birds. I saw birds today during my walk. I was in a crap mood when I started, by the way. I’m not sure why. I think maybe I’m bipolar. But my alarm went off prematurely, right after I’d begun walking. I was like, What? No way. But I checked it and, sure enough, an hour had elapsed. I usually walk an hour and a half. 90 minutes. That’s how long it takes for me to get the 10,000 steps. So I walked a little longer. Eventually, the movement worked and I felt better. Motion creates emotion. Sometimes it’s emotion creating emotion. That’s called inspiration. But sometimes, you don’t feel inspired. But you can’t not show up. I think it was Arthur C. Clarke, world-famous science fiction writer, who said that you can’t sit and wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a stick. Or maybe it was Jack London. I think it was.
Point being that when you’re not feeling inspired, don’t sit and wait for a quote unquote sarcastic feeling. Take control. Start moving, doing what it is you know you need to do. The emotion will blossom from that. So if you need to work out but don’t feel like it, go work out. At some point, you’ll feel like it. If you need to write but don’t feel like it, go write. At some point, you’ll feel like it. If you need to have sex but don’t feel like it, go get naked and start rubbing stuff. At some point, you’ll FEEL like it.
You are in charge.
Not that voice in your head.
Birds.
That was the point. The little birdies. And a cat. But don’t worry, the cat wasn’t harassing or otherwise ingesting the birds. The birds, and this is the point, were green. I’ve only seen green birds that were parakeets or parrots – why do they both start with P? – and they were either at a pet store, in a cage, or in someone’s house, also in a cage.
And I saw a black cat. I stopped and said hello and she came over and rubbed on my legs. Quite a bit. She even started to follow me after I resumed walking. One of her eyes was weird, though. It was either blue, a terrible cataract, some sort of thing she was born with, or it was robotic. She was a cyborg kitty.
Sing it with me – how do I already know the words? – :
She was a cyborg kitty, yes she was.
Her face was black and furry, yes it was.
She could rip your friggin head off, yes she could.
You know she’d never do it, unless-you-were-a-total-dick-to-her-in-which-case-she-probably-would.
But she wouldn’t feel good about it, no, wait, she would.
SB?!
SB: Sheeit, I ain’t even gonna try to follow that! Here’s The Sundaes with Cyborg Kitty and I think I know what this song is about!
{musical interlude}
There you go! The Hot Fudge Sundaes, everybody, with Cyborg Kitty. Somewhere back on Earth, Taylor Swift is like, Man, you have got to be KIDDING me! Why didn’t I think of that? I can totally relate!
By the way, now is a great time to mention that tonight’s show is sponsored as always by Bear Claw Coffee! Really good coffee and mugs for people with big hands. Get your bear claws on some Bear Claw!
Which reminds me: narcissism. Narcissists. These are people who are full of themselves. Right? An inflated ego. Delusions of grandeur. The problem is not them; it’s us. Why do we let these people run their mouths? And why are we listening? And why do we let them assume positions of power and authority, such as academia and government?
Speaking of hating Mondays, plural, pejorative, have you guys seen Joe Versus the Volcano? Amazing movie. Truly amazing. So true. So deep. So funny. So poignant. And so hated and mocked when it came out. Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan. Came out well before You’ve Got Mail, by the way, which was also very, very good; much better than I thought it would be. It was profitable in the end, I believe. But it didn’t do as well as they’d hoped it would. Point being, talk about hating Mondays. Check it out if you’ve never seen it. Especially if you have a brain cloud.
During sex, why do people say, Oh, God, I’m cumming?
C-U-M. I hate that spelling, by the way, and always have.
Oh, God – stroke Gawd – I’m cumming.
Does it actually mean coming? Oh, God – stroke Gawd – I’m…coming?
Because the ecstasy of orgasm is the closest thing our physical bodies can get to the divine, pure, ecstasy that is being in the presence of God?
I read a book a long time ago a guy wrote about UFOs and aliens. You guys, I suppose. It was purported to be nonfiction. Meaning that it actually happened. It was true. It was real. And he said that he was taken up on a craft. Sounds familiar. He also said that, eventually, he asked them about God. And they were like, Oh, um, sorry, we thought you knew: God is real; we found Him. We found heaven. We found the center of the Universe, which is where God is.
And he was like, Oh, um, yeah, no, you, uh, you didn’t mention that. But thanks! Good to know. Okay. Good stuff.
Yeah, so, all aboard the sodomy train. We haven’t said that yet this evening. Plenty of Bear Claw coffee for everyone. Don’t worry: we have regular mugs, too, for people with regular hands. Or multiple hands. Or no hands. Maybe tentacles.
Anybody here into autoerotic asphyxiation? That’s where you like to choke yourself while pleasuring yourself.
No?
Me, either.
Can anyone here hammer a 6-inch spike through a board with their penis?
No?
Me, either.
Is anyone here immortal?
No?
Yeah, me either.
Would you want to be if you could?
Literature and cinema are rife with tales of woe depicting people who live forever. They’re usually miserable. They outlive their families and friends and wind up lonely.
Speaking of which, have you been watching Louie? He’s an immortal vampire who is also a brain surgeon. His name is Louis (Louie) Henert. He hates the sight of blood. He is always dirty and unkempt. Which I’m sure makes scrubbing-in a joy. Scrubbing-in, by the way, is what surgeons do before they perform a surgery. They have a room outside the operating room. And it has a big sink. And they stand there and wash their hands. And their arms. All the way up to the elbows. And they use special soap and scrub brushes. Because they want to be as sterile as possible before they go sticking their hands inside someone’s chest cavity, their quote unquote chestal section, as it were. Or their cranium.
He’s not very smart. Or so it seems. He is an unabashed gourmand because he is ALWAYS hungry.
Do you guys know what a gourmand is? It’s from French. It’s like the opposite of a gourmet. A gourmet is a person who prepares or enjoys delicious food that is high quality. A gourmand is a person who prepares or enjoys delicious food that is simply high QUANTITY.
It’s someone who likes to eat a lot. Meaning when they eat, they eat A LOT. That’s their thing: eating too much.
Note, also, that a lot is two words; not one. If I ever see that on Amazon Prime Video, I’m gonna shit eggrolls.
So our man Louie is always eating, constantly raiding vending machines at the hospital, insists on having a nurse feed him peanut M&M’s one at a time under his mask while he operates. And yes he’s almost definitely sleeping with her. Because he’s Docteur Loo-ee, zee sexy French surgeon vith zee insatiable appetite, oui? He can operate for hours. Quote unquote operate.
He is constantly talking about food, where he ate, where he’s going to eat, and knows ALL the restaurants in New York City and Beverly Hills and Paris and Bologna and Tokyo and in many places around the world.
He hates to cook.
And he has performed more than 25,000 brain jobs, as he calls them.
His specialty is quick and easy brain surgery.
His business card says, Need brain surgery but on a budget? Crackin’ craniums since 1897!
Which is a joke that’s actually not a joke. Because that’s how long he’s been doing this. Pretty much since brain surgery was invented.
After a day of surgerying, he goes to a nice restaurant, orders a rare steak, quote unquote bleu as the French say, which means they walk the steak across the grill briefly just to get it hot, but not to actually cook it much if at all. That’s how our man Louie likes his meat.
And while he eats, he looks all around the restaurant at the other patrons. And when he finds someone he likes, he imagines sucking their blood as he eats the steak.
Our Man Louie.
And then he relapses and starts murdering people. Inviting women up to his Manhattan penthouse and having fun with them. Like racecar drivers spraying champagne everywhere after they win a race. Kind of like Christian Bale in American Psycho.
I hated that movie, by the way. I hated the book, too. I dunno, I just couldn’t get into either one. I think I must’ve been missing something. I bought a copy of the paperback one day at a bookstore, an actual printed book printed on actual paper. Egads. It was a gift for someone. And when I paid for it, the woman working there said, Interesting reading.
Only, she didn’t say it like, Oh, wow, yeah, interesting reading, Ellis is really good! Out there, but good!
She said it all snooty and judgmental and shitty. Like, Mm, interesting reading, you fucking degenerate; go home and enjoy your filthy smut, you filthy degenerate; the whole world is going to Hell because of people like you, you filthy degenerate!; the whole world!; because of you!; you filthy degenerate!; why doesn’t any man want to take ME back to his apartment and screw ME and hack ME to pieces, huh?! Why?! Why?! WHYWHYWHY?!
And then she grabbed the book out of my hand and began ripping pages out of it and stapling them to her face. And she ripped off her blouse and her bra, exposing herself to me and the 2 other people in the bookstore on that Wednesday afternoon or late morning in October. And she began stapling pages of the book to her breasts, weeping and wailing and begging Christian Bale to bring her a Hershey bar. Which was a reference to his first film, Empire of the Sun, by Steven Spielberg, when Christian Bale was like, 11. So it wasn’t clear if she was referring to 11-year-old Christian Bale bringing her a Hershey bar or grown-up-man American Psycho Christian Bale bringing her a Hershey bar.
At any rate, she finally calmed down and stopped crying and got herself together. She went over to the shelf where the American Psycho copies were and she got a fresh copy and put it in a bag. With the barest, most exquisitely sexy sniffle you could imagine, she handed it to me and said, Don’t be ashamed if you wind up masturbating to it.
And you know what?
I wasn’t ashamed at all!
Just kidding. I never did that. To quote Chandler, That didn’t happen; I made that up.
Years later, many, many years later, when I decided to actually read that book for myself to see what all the fuss was about, I bought a copy and tried to read it. I hated it! It was so dull and so repetitive and boring and….
Maybe if I’d been a coke-loving Wall Street trader in the Eighties. But I wasn’t. I was a little fat kid eating pizza and watching cartoons.
I dunno. It just didn’t work for me.
Which is weird because Ellis is a great great writer. I read Lunar Park and loved it. I never read Less Than Zero but the movie was legendary in our house.
Listen: if you love Tony Stark and you love Iron Man, you should watch Less Than Zero.
Speaking of Tony Stark, they never should’ve whacked him. Spoiler alert but I think if by now you’re not aware that Tony went down defeating Thanos, that’s on you.
Point being that they never should’ve whacked him. Just like they never should’ve whacked Glen in Walking Dead.
When a reader entrusts their time to you and you make them fall in love with a character, killing that character is not a laughing matter. Especially if it’s a MAIN character. Especially if it’s THE main character. The character around whom the whole story is built. Which is what Tony Stark, thee Tony Stark, frickin Iron Man, is stroke was.
Game of Thrones is perhaps the sickest representation of that. Writers everywhere began whacking characters after Ned Stark got it. So much so that, in my opinion, it became convention. Which cost it its efficacy. And then it became flat-out trite. With derivative work after derivative work all competing for shock value. Like killing the love interest at the end of the romance. It’s cheap. Effective. But cheap. So that ship, I think, has sailed. So wait another ten years before you whack your main character.
Nonetheless, check out Less Than Zero. Julian. So good.
And yeah, do the work. Like we talked about earlier with getting in shape and motion creating emotion and working out. Working out should be called working IT out. Because that’s what happens. You lift something until you can’t lift it anymore. You literally fail. The goal is to fail. To work until you fail. And then you rest and do it again. And you do that every day, 4 to 6 days a week, maybe even 7 if you’re feeling yourself. And over time, you GET STRONGER. You GROW. You become stronger. Failing makes you better. That’s how it works.
And the anxiety fades until you can’t hear that voice anymore. You stop caring about what it has to say. And maybe it starts saying other things. Or maybe that’s YOUR voice, the real you, the one you’ve always wanted to be.
And you get better. At everything.
Even at having no anxiety.
And the reason is because you did the work.
So get to work. Get to work on the work. Work on your work. Work out. Never skip a workout.
See what happens.
So, anyway, our man, Louie, is not a man so much as a vampire. And a brain surgeon. Because he’s immortal and never sleeps and is constantly eating in order to try to resist sucking someone’s blood and murdering them.
He is torn by the moral quandary, however, that exists within the act of turning someone into a vampire. Because, yes, on the one hand, they are a living person. And biting them and drinking their blood and turning them into a vampire does kill them. But then they come back and become Undead.
So is it still murder?
What if the person wants to be turned? Like the way Bella wanted Edward to turn her.
A question, if I may: Before he turned her, they had sex. They got married and consummated their marriage in their marriage bed. And Bella once described Edward’s hands as ice cold.
Ice-cold.
As cold as ice.
So his penis was, too, right?
Now, I’m no vampire brain surgeon but wouldn’t a phallus at such a low temperature be uncomfortable?
Is there such thing as popsicle porn? If so, it should probably be called yeast infection porn. Because of the sugar.
When people do cosplay and do an Edward-and-Bella storyline, is there a popsicle involved? Are people putting sex toys in the freezer? Is it even possible to fetishize cold?
How much better was it for Bella after Edward turned her and they were the same temperature? Their lovemaking must’ve been better, right? A, because he didn’t feel so cold to her, and B, because he no longer had to be careful about not accidentally killing her. Edward was like the ultimate vegan. Animals instead of people. That’s the same as veggie burgers instead of meat, right?
Same with our man Louie. He eats and eats and eats. Regular food, though. Meat, pasta, you name it. He eats everything. But he doesn’t drink blood. Even though he can literally smell it like barbecue smoke every time he gets within a block of the hospital. Because he can smell the blood they keep in the blood bank.
It’s like a smoker who quits smoking and then hangs around a cigar shop all day selling cigars and watching people smoke and rolling cigars and making cigars but never smoking any themselves.
Every time our man Louie finishes a surgery, he has blood all over his gloves. Because he’s had his fingers inside someone’s skull. And try as you might, you make a mess. It would be real easy for him to lick his gloved fingers while no one is looking. Just a little uhmooz boosh.
Sometimes, late at night, when he’s doing rounds, he’ll wander around the hospital and look at all the people lying there in their hospital beds, fast asleep.
You can imagine what’s going through his mind.
And then there’s the people in places like Europe, the country of Europe, where they have suicide clinics for people who are terminally ill. People can go there and unalive themselves in a dignified manner. At least, that’s the argument for it. It’s tempting for him to visit such a place. Once the patient has drunk the icky medicine that’s going to kill them and they’ve eaten the chocolate to get the taste out of their mouth and they’re getting drowsy because the quote unquote medicine is kicking in, he could pop in there and have a bite. Right? No harm done. Or maybe stick a straw in their carotid artery?
It’s essentially the same as organ donation, right? They get to virtue signal to their friends about how they’re going to feed a needy vampire and said vampire gets a wholesome meal.
Imagine the latenight infomercial for that one. You’re sitting on the sofa, way past your bedtime, the Haagen Dazs is long gone, and then you see the guy with the grey hair come on. He’s in an old church somewhere in Eastern Europe, which is of course a different country from regular Europe, and he says, Today, long pause, there are over one million needy vampires. For just fifteen cents a day, you can sponsor a needy vampire of your very own. Just fifteen cents a day… You’ll receive a dodgy Polaroid of your vampire taken in a dark place, a photograph that will haunt your very soul. Put it on your fridge! You’ll even get a short video of your vampire introducing themselves to you. For example, this is Sidonee. Say hello, Sidonee.
And this dirty little Oliver Twist type with yellow eyes and yellow fangs peeps, Hello.
How old are you Sidonee?
Eleven. But I’m actually a hundred and six.
And what blood type is your favorite, Sidonee?
Sidonee gets bashful all of a sudden and looks off into space like a child thinking about ice cream, and he finally says, O-positive!
For just fifteen cents a day, you can help Sidonee receive all the O-positive blood he needs to survive. Just fifteen cents a day. That’s just four dollars and fifty cents a month. The price of one cup of shitty coffee. Please, visit needy vampires dot com today and give poor little Sidonee hope. And a juice box of blood. Sign up today.
Edward can smell Bella's blood and he describes it as being the most amazing aroma he's ever smelled and that it drives him wild. So can a vampire smell the cancer cells inside a person's body? We know dogs are able to smell cancer cells in petri dishes when tested. And we know sharks can smell blood in the water from seven miles away. So does the blood of a person with an illness or disease smell different? Like rotten meat? Rotten milk? Like vinegar? I’ve heard that having an acidic environment inside your body aids cancer cells in their growth, which is why you should maintain a more basic environment by avoiding sugar and drinking lemon water and whatnot.
Who knows if any of this is in fact true, of course.
But from Doctor Louie’s standpoint, he’s got iron will. Every day he goes into work and literally has blood on his hands but he has to pretend it’s no big deal.
Imagine you’re stranded in the wilderness for a month and you survive on snow and acorns and desperation and one day you finally decide to walk until you reach help or you die. And low and behold within a ten-minute walk is a Domino’s Pizza. And it’s been there all this time. For the whole month you were trying to stay alive. So you burst through the doors and the first thing you ask for is not food, not pizza, but rather a nice tall glass of ice water. Or a snowcone.
Or, if you’re a needy vampire, you ask for a glass of O-positive.
That’s our show!
Thank you!
Goodnight!
Remember to tip your waitress!
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