The American Dream

Shit, not again. The buzz of the alarm clock is screaming at me from the other room. Fuck! The only way to shut it up is to actually stand up. I'm lying on the couch, wearing only my boxers. In front of me sits a TV tray with a 24oz can of Coors Light ¾ full. I contemplate drinking it. "No, gotta get to work". I walk to the bedroom and hit the snooze button. I figure I can catch a few more z's, if I'm a half hour late, no one will give a shit. I turn on the CD player and press play then lay back down. I'm still fucking drunk from last night. Apparently I made it to bed at one time as my clothes that I had on yesterday are on the bedroom floor. I must have gotten up to drink a beer and fell asleep on the couch. The clock screams at me again, I hit snooze, if I'm an hour late, no one will give a shit. My dog, Panzer, is breathing so heavy at my feet on the mattress that it rocks the bed up and down, this fucking place is so god-damn hot. I keep on hearing people say, "At least it's not too humid", I don't know what planet they're from, this sucks. There it is again, trying to motivate, like some pissed-off marine drill sergeant. I hit snooze, make up some bullshit excuse about family emergencies, and call to say I'm running a bit late. Gotta get up, gotta get up. I try to coax myself. It's not working. After about two and half more hours of hitting snooze, I call for a cab. Pricy, but I figure the time saved is equivalent to the wage lost if I were to choose the bus. I go to brush my teeth, no toothpaste. Ran out over a week ago. I hope my teeth don't fall out. I brush without the paste. My toothbrush smells like urine. I wonder if my fucking cat pissed on it. I hate that god damn cat. My ex-wife took the bread machine and everything else she could claim any type of ownership over, but stuck me with her fucking cat. I never even wanted the fucking thing. Now it torments Panzer and I on a never-ending basis. I'm in the half drunk, half hung-over stage at this point. Again I think about polishing off the beer I don't remember opening, It's the only way to bring life back to me. Bad idea, I pour it down the sink to avoid further temptation. I was so proud of myself yesterday for not getting myself to this state the night before, what fucking happened?


8-hours, 5 days, it's gonna fucking break me. Every god-damn day the same fucking thing. Whose idea was this shit anyways? Yeah, I know, that's life. Well what kind of life is it? Wow, I get a 48-hr time span to try and regain any sort of happiness that has been sucked out of me in the previous five days. I really don't get it. How on earth have people been doing this for so long? I may be able to beat the shit out of all my co-workers, but they seem to be able to show up every day, sober, showered, neat and clean. Heck, they're stronger than me, or maybe just a bit dumber. Possibly their lives suck more than even mine and work is their escape, like my alcohol. Or maybe they've faced their alcoholism and replaced the addiction with work, the one addiction society celebrates. Is there the work equivalent to MADD? How 'bout MEOW? Mothers Enraged by Over Working. I'm all for that. If you consistently put too many hours in at work, you should be punished. Just like a DUI. You'd have to sit in on a MEOW panel and hear stories of how workaholism has ruined families and led to countless suicides. Why not? I've got to sit in weekly meetings all because I rode my motorcycle after a few. The one addiction I can honestly claim to not be susceptible to is work. I'm kind of like an Indian who doesn't feel the need to drink. I'm a white man who doesn't feel the need to work.


I accept the fact that I have to do something to support my own existence. What I don't accept is that I have to show up every fucking day. Why not just four days a week? Honestly, I think I'd actually get more done. But that extra day, 8-hours, fucking kills me. I can't be alone in this. It seems obvious. Why don't we all just rise up? There's a lot more of us than there are people making money off of us, so why doesn't the whole nation just stop showing up to work, One day a week? And no, I'm not a fucking communist. Although I do like the idea of the lack of life choice that communism provides, keeps you from making the wrong decisions. I guess another argument for communism would be socialized health care. The only reason I actually work is for the insurance. I'm sure I'm not the only one. That's probably why we don't have health care in this country. No one would work. We'd all just hang out and be happy. Work and happiness does not go hand-in-hand for me. I detest it. I loath my parents for not being more successful and creating a trust fund for me. I mean shit! My dad's a fucking workaholic (and quite the functional alcoholic, I might add), how is it he didn't make millions and leave it for my sister and I? I guess if he did, my mom would have spent it anyways. That's another argument against work. My dad worked god-only-knows how many hours a week and sat every night in the living room drinking his gin, doing paper work, always fucking working. What does he have to show for all this? I mean really, he doesn't have that much more than me. And if you do the whole hours worked, good times had equation, I think I'm coming out ahead. I've got all sorts of neat shit and all he's got is a big house, a wife, a bitch of a daughter and an (obviously) ungrateful son-of-a-bitch for a son. He worked his whole fucking life, he finally retired and does enjoy his life. He's active, has his hobbies, his projects. As he once said to me, "I realized that just because you don't have to go to work, it doesn't mean you should start drinking before noon, that's why I've always got a project to work on". I just wonder how much more he'd enjoy his life he has now at the age of 25. At that age you've got coordination, strength, energy, everything. Unfortunately, around the age that athletes are peaking, we're all getting a head-start on the long, slow path to misery and death, fan-fucking-tastic. I think the spirit is the first thing to go. I'm as much a hippie as a commie, so shut the fuck up. You show up at your first "real" job full of energy, nervous, excited. You've been fed the lie that you have yet to realize. You soon realize that this job sucks. But you don't realize it's every job. You work a few more, each seemingly a bit worse than the last. Finally you realize it's not the individual job that sucks, but all jobs, and you're not even 30 years old! This means you've got to hang on for a span longer than you've lived before you can finally stop working and have more than your 48-hours of play time a week. Oh, before I forget, if you're as lucky as me, you get two weeks vacation a year, paid. Wow, two weeks, after you use up half of that being too fucking drunk to go to work and not get fired, you've got one week to sit and dread the fact that the tranquility you feel is only temporary. It's like granting a prisoner parole, only to lock him back up on a technicality.