The Finger-Lickin' Good Life: The Reverend's Secret Recipe For Happiness

Cooper: How 'bout that one, Colonel?
Sanders: Yeah, maybe with a one of my
buckets on her head.

Every morning, after I peel off the covers, don my bathrobe, and emerge from my masturbatorium to take on the world, I have this little routine that I go through - a morning ritual, if you will.  First off, I make my way into the kitchen and put on the coffee.  While it's brewing, I go take my morning dump.  This is one of the few areas where I find my creative output to be both prolific and substantive and, after finishing, I often take a moment to gaze upon my work here and despair.  I return, dejected to the kitchen, pour myself a cup o' joe, and then sit down at my computer desk and fire up a menthol.

While I smoke and caffeinate myself, I spew a couple pages of pretentious drivel into my journal, check my email to see if I've received any rejection notices from publishers or chicks on Plenty of Fish, and then try to figure out how long it will take before I run out of money.  After that, I have a few more cups of coffee, five or six more smokes, and by then, I'm jacked up enough on stimulants, self-loathing, and soul-crushing disappointment, to pretty much be ready to start thinking about maybe doing a little actual writing.

Another love connection made possible by POF.

More often than not, though, I get distracted or interrupted prior to dipping my quill.  The phone rings.  Or, someone's posted a link on my Facebook page and I feel obligated to check it out and then I spend a bunch of time trying to come up with some witty comment on it.  Or, I'm tempted to clickity-click the Pornhub tab on my bookmark bar and give myself a little much-needed TLC.  Or, I just keep smoking and drinking coffee until it seems late enough in the day to start smoking and drinking beer.

The other day, though, my routine was interrupted by the piercing shriek of the intercom buzzer.  I got up, hit the access button, opened my door, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a pair of beatifically smiling tweens all dutied up in their Sunday finest.  The male, and thus, leader/spokesman, sported a white, buttoned-all-the-way-up dress shirt tucked into a pair of black slacks.  His female helper monkey was kickin' it all cozy and comfy in a navy-blue cardigan over an ankle-length, floral-print sun dress.

Shit.

Our exchange went as follows:

Little did they know, Caleb and Penny
were mere moments away from the most
terrifying and delicious erotic experience
of their entire lives.  

Male JW: Good morning, sir.  My name is Caleb.  This is my friend, Penny.

Me: Well, hello there, Penny.

Caleb: And how are you doing on this glorious day?

Me: I'm alright.  A little hung-over.

Caleb: Great!  Anyways, we have some good news for you.

Me: Oh yeah?

Caleb: Yes, oh my, yes!  Jesus Christ died for your sins!

Me: Well, hey, thank him for me next time you talk to him.

I'm never overtly rude to the Witnesses.  In fact, I kind of get a kick out of how they go around pissing everyone off.  Nonetheless, they are pests, and I have a sure-fire way of getting rid of them when I'm not in the mood.  I bluntly offer to accept a copy of the Watchtower in exchange for sex, and then I begin undressing as I make my way toward my bedroom.  So far, none of them have ever followed me in there and they're always gone when I come back out.  I'm a man of my word though: if they took me up on it, let me tell you, I'd snatch the Watchtower right out of their hands.

Then I'd fuck the living shit out of them.

Anyways, I was bored, and Penny was kind of hot, so I invited them inside for coffee.  We talked for about 45 minutes, and though I found their worldview to be, for the most part, irrational and quite often repugnant, I was struck by one thing about these two brainwashed dipshits:

They were both deliriously fucking happy.

Following his recent podium appearance
and subsequent endorsement deal,
Tommy's family is now reconsidering
the Foster Care option.

I've often wondered about this.  Why does it sometimes seem like the only genuinely happy people in the world are born again christians and the mentally retarded?  Is happiness nothing more than a kind mental illness or delusion - some sort of incapacity or willful suspension of critical thinking?  Is our only hope for lasting joy and contentment to join a cult or jam a coat-hanger up our noses into our cerebellums?

Don't worry, kids.  The Reverend Dick has got a recipe for this oh-so-elusive dish.  Though the ingredients are rare and often hard to come by, they're out there if you look for them:

Enjoy.

1.  One big, sloppy scoop of Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher."

I'm not really talking about the ugly-on-ugly variety of love here.  I'm talking about genuine, lasting, meaningful connections with one another.  Family, friends, partners, pretty much everybody, with the possible exception of politicians and corporate executives, who as we all know, must be destroyed.

Before embarking on a course of action, ask yourself,

WWJD: What would Jackie do?

He'd preach the fucking love, that's what.  Be like Jackie.

2.  3 Heaping Tbs. of Animal Collective's "My Girls."

A friend of mine once told me that, when he's feeling all low-down and depressed, he asks himself three fundamental questions:

1.  Am I hungry?
2.  Am I cold?
3.  Do I have to piss?

If he can answer "no" to each, then really, how fucking bad can things be?  Wise words.  But, as Animal Collective's Panda Bear knows only too well, sometimes the answer here is "yes."  It sucks to worry about whether you're going to have to quit smoking in order to pay the rent, or to have to take the beer cans back and roll up your pennies so you can get yourself a box a Kraft dinner and a can of tuna.  It's hard to be happy when you're not getting your basic needs met.  We may not want to "seem like (we) care about material things," as Panda Bear puts it, but we all need food, clothing, shelter, and a place to piss.  And we need to be free from the threat of losing these things.      

3.  A pinch of "Let's Lynch The Landlord" by the Dead Kennedys.

Before Jesus came along with his whole turn the other cheek nonsense, the Ancients considered smashing one's enemies to be a virtue.  Too often in life, we find our above-mentioned security being undermined by the forces of evil, personified here by the DKs as a lynch-worthy landlord.  The road to happiness is paved with power and freedom and the obstacles that block our path forward must be removed.  Which is to say, if you see the Man sitting in his tollbooth along the way, don't pay him.  Kill him.

4.  A drizzle of "Full Moon" by Armand Van Helden featuring Common to taste.

As Common so eloquently spits of here, sometimes you just gotta let loose: hit the clubs, get stoned and shitfaced, dance your ass off, lure someone into the bathroom, and fuck like beasts without a condom on.

So to speak.

5.  Garnish with a little "Float On" by Modest Mouse.


Besides love, acceptance is perhaps the most important ingredient of all.  Guess what, kids?  Things are never going to work out exactly the way you want them to.  Sometimes your loved ones abandon you.  Your friends will probably let you down.  The Man will, at times, stand victorious over your fallen form, snickering and chirping derision at you like you're a fucking chump.  The Buddha is too often right when he tells us that life is suffering.  Then again, it may not always be shits and giggles but its not always tears and torment either.  To live well is to cultivate the capacity for both, for the loftiest joys and the deepest of sorrows.  At the end of the day, it really all comes down to how loudly you can howl.