Weakened in Paradise

Special Report -- I look pretty hell-damn good.

Some of my enemies don't believe I have a reflection, but I do have one and it's rather attractive. I'm handsome in a non-traditional, asymmetric, rugged, quirky, funny-looking way.

Genetic attributes have a lot to do with it, of course, but my family's DNA chain has had its fair share of broken or missing links. My father always told me he's not sure about my mother's identity because he was really drunk the night I was conceived. 

My marriage -- my wife's desertion of it a few months ago notwithstanding -- was the second serious relationship of my life. The first involved a girl with whom I used to work, back when I was just a pup. That gal was crazy about me. She used to put her time card in the slot right next to mine -- I'm not kidding! Her employee number was 23678. She was nice.

Abandonment is a state of mind. Yes, it is also a specific legal status, but I think I have a good case. I'll be sitting pretty -- financially speaking, not the other kind -- following the successful conclusion of the lawsuit I brought against my soon-to-be ex-wife and ex-kids. I think the injunction for my spouse to pay alimony is founded on solid judicial principles, and I also expect to set a new precedent by winning my reverse-patrimony argument against my ingrate children.

I always believed my best bet for employment was the service sector, but it hasn't worked out the way I expected. I'll never give up intelligence-gathering, covert surveillance, and stalking as hobbies, of course, but ever since Big Government became more deeply involved in those fields I'm finding it much more difficult to make a living pursuing the observational arts.

There's still a little money coming in from my moonlight job as a convention delegate -- it really helps to do it for more than one political party at a time. I'm thinking about supplementing that meager income by becoming a competitive hotdog eater. Seems risky, I will admit. I don't mind going to a ball game and getting a little 24-hour stomach flu from a couple of frankfurters (it's almost like an American tradition or something), but eating twenty or a hundred of those things in a short period of time sounds downright suicidal. The pay is great, though.

The quality of this country's food supply is tanking just as fast as the societal landscape. If the same lovin' care went into the handling and preparation of fresh jalapeno peppers as what goes into my survivalist thirty-year-shelf-life beef stew, there'd be nothing to worry about. Sure, a case of 24 cans costs nearly $350, but I'm convinced wider distribution would create some economies of scale.

Tiger Woods vs. Rafael Nadal. Madonna vs. the entire New York Yankees. NASCAR vs. the four day work week. Set 'em up and knock 'em down. Every day brings a new challenge -- or, as we used to say at my former place of employment, opportunity. Assholes.

Years ago, I made a semi-conscious decision not to phone-in my life. It would be easier to become complacent and let my existence find its own level, but I'm not willing to take that chance. There are too many powerful forces arrayed against me. My failure would serve their interests perfectly. Extended-shelf-life canned goods do not buy themselves. No one works on weekends because they want to.

I'm not a cheerleader for the apocalypse, but I don't think the end of the world as we know it has to be completely negative, either. Inevitability possesses a strength I find both compelling and comforting.

Sorry, this seat is taken.