Dear America,
Hi there. Hi. It’s just me. Yeah, OK, yeah. Don’t hang up. Listen. Yeah, I had a few glasses of wine at dinner tonight. Then I went out and had some whiskey — OK, a LOT of whiskey — at the bar tonight and suffice it to say, which is why I am calling, i got to thinking about you and me. Don’t hang up. Listen. I think i figured something out, America, about you and me which is that I have no clue how we both fucked this up so horribly. Yeah, you and me. You and me both. You with your chest thumping, hawkish “you’re with us or against us” bravado when inside, poor America, you were just as frightened as the rest of us. And me by playing right into it and threatening constantly to move to Canada.
Listen, America, listen, don’t hang up. I am really, really sorry I even brought that up. I love you too much to keep reopening old wounds and I hate you when you keep reopening old wounds and yet, here we are, every time we get together, every time we talk. Listen America. I adore your hypocrisy. I adore your complexity. I love living in a country that supplies me with so much enticing material, so many horrifying visions: the moral majority pundit speaking dipshit, absurdly Anglicized Spanish in an effort to score opiates off his maid; where we elect and expect politicians that seduce us at large and screw us indiscreetly, then crucifiy them for doing the same to their interns; where vocal atheists insist on being married by priests; the list goes on.
I’m not complaining, America. You say I say hypocrisy like it’s a bad thing, but baby, if you contradict yourself, it’s only because your large and because your multitudes contain multitudes, within themselves. Speaking of multitudes and multiples, let me get started on your whole sanctimonious self-help, pop psychology industry which, currently, would have a single gal like me plunking down a couple hours’ pay and spending several hours of my time to tell me not to dwell on prior relationship woes.
All right America. It’s Christmas time. There are a couple of things I love about Christmas time. One is Charlie Brown consistently grumbling about how his Christmas lights-stringing “commercial dog” threatened to ruin his Christmas, while of course, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are two of the most recognizeable and frequently licensed commercial characters on the planet. And as I own many likenesses of both of them — I’ve got a small stuffed Snoopy perched on my desk as I write this and at all other times — I think it’s safe to say I’m happy about that, painful irony and all.
The other thing I love is “It’s a Wonderful Life,” because in the hellish alternate reality that is Pottersville every business in town is owned by a single man. I love it because it tanked at the box office and because for many years, due to a clerical error at the copyright office, it fell into public domain and TV stations played the hell out of it. I love that a few years ago the rights to the movie were purchased by a man who, bested only by Murdoch, is well on his way to establishing a similar dominance over everything we see, read and hear — even that particular winsome tale in which a monosopolistic economy is a dangerous, isolated and lonely place. Because of course, as a friend of mine said, we’ve all long since left Bedford Falls behind.
Anyway. I’m getting off track, America. I don’t think I can possibly say I love you enough. Because I really, really do. Listen. Tonight I considered a solution. I’ve said before that your war on a tactic is perhaps as ill-thought-out as the previously declared war on certain categories of psychotropic substances and as semantically troubled as one previous America’s war on poverty (yeah, we did great with that one, eh?). I’ll see to you America that wars bring one thing: together. They bring TOGETHER us and you, me and them and America, we are ripe for one rightly and awfully interesting opportunity: THE WAR ON SOBRITY. Excuse me. SOBRETY. SOB-RYE-ET-EE. We put the RYE back in SOBRIETY America htus obliterating it from within.
America this is a five part solution to: 1) terrorists, 2) poverty, crime and drugs 3) the fucking incredibly annoying “red state blue state” (and porbably false) dichotomy. 4) Also, under this plans to all the pundits will be too fucking drunk to be sayig anywmore stupid things about like, “Who’s winning the horses race?” “My pony’s on Charlie Chaplin” and all.
THE WAR ON SOBRIETY will bring America together, forwards, side to side,a nd prostrate inside the showers of many, many and many angry, troubled young men. And that’s not all: it will get people in the hackey-sack, if you know what I mean, and people who are fucking are so often NOT building or blowing up stupid buildings, dams or other parts of America. Which is good. We need all the America we can get for this plan to be an action!
1) THE WAR ON SOBRIETY WILL BE A LONG WAR, AND IT MAY NOT BE WINNABLE. The war on sobriety begins at home. Those stupid parents who try to know who Britney Spears is, tallk about their vaginal rejuvenation surgeries and otherwise have really bad ideas about how they are still teenagers, THEY ARE OUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE, by allowing their teenagers to get drunk in the garage and by how they think its’ cool and adorable when Heather gets her hair caught in the garbage disposal by throwing up too hard in the sink. And dying a pretty ugly, stupid and unattractive death. That’s a good thing to laugh about. We can forgive these people for thinking white zinfandel is an OK thing to give to their premature sorostituted teenage daughters and embarassingly endowed neighbor boys sons-in-law. Because, they know what drinkings contain alcochol and which do not and they also know, that all the cool kids are doing it is, in fact, an acceptable reason in a country when *most* if not all of us are secretly thinking jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge wqould be pretty fucking cool.
2) IF YOU ARE NOT WITH US, YOU ARE NOT WITH US, AND THAT FUCKING SUCKS. “War on a state of mind?” Stupid rhetoric? Economically and physically unfeasible? Mostly a bad and “intermparetant” ideas, you say? Guess what very much like the girl in the leather jacket who would not shut up about her long life of loathing, you had better learn some listening skills or learn to love getting your throat pulled out through your asshole, WITH EXTREMED prejudicees, and also learn to take yor puking abilities LIKE A MAN AND A WOMAN AND A CHILD PUT TOGETHER. The second line of defense in our war on sobriety is adorable college kids who act like they might even actually be into fucking you. See also jungle juice, sloe gin and extremely loud Metallica songs, only because they’re fun and who isn’t really, really good at air guitar?
3) YOU GO TO WAR WITH THE ALCOHOL YOU’VE GOT. Third line of defense is (almost) all alcohol suppliers and purveyors in this country. This even includes people who sell extremely bad whiskeys and stupid girly beers. You will notice that while people are drinking all they can pretty much do is hit each other and maybe break a few windows of the bar. This keeps them from doing more annoying things, like voting for Ralph Nader, sucking the President’s cock or writing for the National Review. The course of national events will become more like the biggest Rodney Dangerfield movie (RIP) party ever made, wherein people you just hand you margaritas and every blondie on the planet wants to show you her boobs and Jake Ryan in all ways actually is going to slide the birthday cake down the coffee table and put his member in you, back and front. The point being that if the only tool you have is a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and a bag of skittles, everything looks like a barely legal junior high school slumber party. Another point being that even the alcohols we would much rather not drink, like stupid wine coolers and sorority girl mallt liquor, plus American beers, plus just really gross watered down dollar store whiskey from a flask, will assist us in this task. Let’s stop judging people by what they drink and start rewarding foir how drunk they ARE and what they can do for our country and cause. Some of us might call this solidarity. Some of us might say that MUSIC, (synthetic bass line), BRINGS THE PEOPLE (synthetic bass line), duh nuh NUH, TOGETHER, (duh nuh), TOGETHER, (duh nuh nuh) and point out that everybody, always, should be ina limousine in a cowboy hat. Others point to the patriotic caterwaulings of the Neil diamonds, the Lee Greensomethings, and variuous other Candian assholes and people who speak with British accents. The point is, that, thank God, it doesn’t matter, because you’re drunk.
4. SUPPORT THE DRUNKS. For while we all cannot fight the front lines on sobriety (cue word: lurch! vomit! ha ha ha!) we all of us can do the following things to let them know our support. First, we can have sex with drunken exes who call us and say how they want to have sex. (Hint, hint.) Even if we are also having sex with more sober, responsible citizens just because they have “jobs” and aren’t “constantly playing with our nipples like breastfeeding babies.” Our job as supportive citizens is not to be tightassed hypocrticial prudes. It is also to have plenty of lubricant for said tight asses. Another job of the sober supporter is making coffee. Not because coffee makes you sober (pay attention in health class, because thank God, it doesn’t) but because it is fucking delicious. Other foods, like French fries and (for our allies in the cannabis community) completely stupid foods made by Hostess and Frito-Lay, should be avaiulable at all times, for they are mostly delicious to those of us in a non-sober state. There must be citizens for purposes of hair holding back, vomit cleanage, and to tell us we could not possibly have made out with that one guy because he wasn’t even at that party. Because we are grossed out even to imagine it, plus we feel kind of slutty. The sober supporter’s job is to mitigate that. The sober supporter should drive us home (because the last thing we want to do is possibly injure the numerous other drunks out there on the roads tonight), tell us how awesome we are during the low points in our drunken morale, agree to beat up the stupid girl in the leather jacket when we’re too fucked up to throw punches, and always, always, always sleep in the wet spot. Criticism of the war on sobriety is disrepectful to the drunks on the front lines. It is also extremely annoying. No great nation was built with carrot juice and cookies, you assholes.
5. YOU CAN’T MAKE AN OMELET WITHOUT BREAKING A FEW DRUNKS. Nobody said the war on sobriety would be fun (OK, except that one frat guy at your freshman mixer), or that we wouldn’t end up listening to really bad funk bands when we should have been back home studying for our physics test. Nobody said you couldn’t get pregnant the first time (OK, except that same frat guy) or that all parties are actually and truly fun, or that you wouldn’t make out with at least three gasbag assholes who tell you three days later that they already have girlfriends. Nobody said fortified wine was actually a fucking good idea, much less out of a box. Nobody said you wouldn’t vomit or get the clap. Those are the risks you take in the war on sobriety. They are the risks you take for freedom., even if it turns out only to be the freedom to hump a streetlamp while pretending it is a horse. They are the risks you take for knowing you and your friends are now safe from one of this country’s most insidious social diseases. You will sleep better knowing you are pumped full of gallons of the #1 cheap legal depressant world wide. You will sleep better kowing you are not one of those kids who knocks cigarettes out of people’s hands at parties, knwing that while Jell-O (TM!) shooters are actually pretty shitty, they beat church potluck Jell-O (TM!!!) salads any day of the week. They beat doing really dumb sexual experiences SOBER and not having a fucking excuse (thanks, everybody, for not sending the memo on this to me when I was 19 years old, by the way). They beat having to go to ice cream socials and pretend the other people there are actually funny. Drinking is also a lot better than books. Trust me: I’ve tried them both. It’s a small price to pay for freedom, sugar babies.