Pantsy

To be insulted by these fascists... is so degrading.

Imperialism is a fashion statement.

Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more
depressed by what was happening to everybody he knew,
decided finally to off himself. There was no problem,
in the circles where he hung out, in putting an end to
yourself; you just bought into a large quantity of
reds and took them with some cheap wine, late at
night, with the phone off the hook so no one would
interrupt you.

The planning part had to do with the artifacts you
wanted found on you by later archeologists. So they'd
know from which stratum you came. And also could piece
together where your head had been at the time you did
it.

He spent several days deciding on the artifacts. Much
longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself, and
approximately the same time required to get that many
reds. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed,
with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (which
would prove he had been a misunderstood superman
rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by
their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon
protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card.
That way he would indict the system and achieve
something by his death, over and above what the death
itself achieved.

Actually, he was not as sure in his mind what the
death achieved as what the two artifacts achieved; but
anyhow it all added up, and he began to make ready,
like an animal sensing its time has come and acting
out its instinctive programming, laid down by nature,
when its inevitable end was near.

At the last moment (as end-time closed in on him) he
changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to
drink the reds down with a connoisseur wine instead of
Ripple or Thunderbird, so he set off on one last
drive, over to Trader Joe's, which specialized in fine
wines, and bought a bottle of 1971 Mondavi Cabernet
Sauvignon, which set him back almost thirty
dollars--all he had.

Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it
breathe, drank a few glasses of it, spent a few
minutes contemplating his favorite page of _The
Illustrated Picture Book of Sex_, which showed the
girl on top, then placed the plastic bag of reds
beside his bed, lay down with the Ayn Rand book and
unfinished protest letter to Exxon, tried to think of
something meaningful but could not, although he kept
remembering the girl being on top, and then, with a
glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon, gulped down all the
reds at once. After that, the deed being done, he lay
back, the Ayn Rand book and letter on his chest, and
waited.

However, he had been burned. The capsules were not
barbiturates, as represented. They were some kind of
kinky psychedelics, of a type he had never dropped
before, probably a mixture, and new on the market.
Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to
hallucinate. Well, he thought philosophically, this is
the story of my life. Always ripped off. He had to
face the fact--considering how many of the capsules he
had swallowed--that he was in for some trip.

The next thing he knew, a creature from between
dimensions was standing beside his bed looking down at
him disapprovingly.

The creature had many eyes, all over it, ultra-modern
expensive-looking clothing, and rose up eight feet
high. Also, it carried an enormous scroll.

"You're going to read me my sins," Charles Freck
said.

The creature nodded and unsealed the scroll.

Freck said, lying helpless on his bed, "and it's
going to take a hundred thousand hours."

Fixing its many compound eyes on him, the creature
from between dimensions said, "We are no longer in the
mundane universe. Lower-plane categories of material
existence such as 'space' and 'time' no longer apply
to you. You have been elevated to the transcendent
realm. Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in
shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end."

Know your dealer, Charles Freck thought, and wished
he could take back the last half-hour of his life.

A thousand years later he was still lying there on
his bed with the Ayn Rand book and the letter to Exxon
on his chest, listening to them read his sins to him.
They had gotten up to the first grade, when he was six
years old.

Ten thousand years later they had reached the sixth
grade.

The year he had discovered masturbation.

He shut his eyes, but he could still see the
multi-eyed, eight-foot-high being with its endless
scroll reading on and on.

"And next--" it was saying.

Charles Freck thought, At least I got a good wine.

-Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

"Why am I not surprised that you own a crowbar?" Jessica asked me.
You tell me.

"We could hold hands, or cuddle, or gently caress eachother all night..."

She pondered it for a half-moment.

"I could fit that wine bottle in your ass."

"Do we get to drink it first?" I replied.

Pink virgin ass for sale. $1000 and a decent bottle of wine and I'm all yours.

They were just waiting for me to leave town for a week so that they could cover my kitchen in crystals and paintings of purple cats.

...And the famous man with a moustache ensures his role of frontman fully.

"That sounds disgusting. There's no way in hell I'd eat that, unless I was starving to death or being polite."

Never underestimate what a ripe mango will do for you.