DOUBLE WIDE

by Jim Parnell

Volstead Oh-Vodey-Oh-Doh!

When the Going Gets Tough
The Tough Get Blasted


An abnormally large number of you have been neglecting your duties lately.  The Friday Blow-Out has become merely a secondary recreational activity rather than a mandatory healthful ablution, a purging of the insults and offhand horrors inflicted by Warhol-fueled news reports, backstabbing co-workers, upper management ignoramuses, and everyday life in general.

The Blow-Out is beyond duty.  It is beyond therapy.  It is your civic imperative as an American.

When the hordes of do-gooders come pounding on your door, telling you that you can't knock back a drink or two, or that you can't puff a smoke in your own air, or even Do the Nasty in that new position in the privacy of your own kitchen table, then you'll be sorry you didn't say something sooner.
 

(Ed. note: Actually, there are no new positions, just check the Kama Sutra.  You'll be hard pressed (no pun intended) to find anything you've tried that ain't listed.  Corollary to Murphy's Law, Heinlein's Heuristic:
"If it can be done a way, somebody did it.  A lot.  And enjoyed it, too, once they got their hip back in joint."
But I digress from my digression)
 
And don't think they're not out there, waiting in the shadows (and in Peeboppen, Alabama and Mooseknocker, Montana), ready to wind their tourniquet around the Bill of Rights (not to mention your Happy Stick) and pop the 'D' cells right out of your silver bullets!

You can see them most every night on Christian TV, eyes a-glazing and veins a-bulging from their foreheads, as they cast their prayers heavenward in fierce concentration.  Yes they're praying for you, with unshakeable belief that one day, you too will become one of them, for who in their right minds would not want to be saved!  With their battle cry, "BE HEALED!  (bend over)...", they stand supreme in righteous arrogance, utterly confident in their ultimate victory, their Armageddon, which, if God's a little tardy in bringing to pass, they'll be happy to hurry along with a few well placed packets of C-4 and purloined fissionables.

In the meantime, they will continue to make life miserable for anyone in their vicinity who's not just like them.  They'll close the bars like that idiot Volstead did in 1920.  They'll put up cameras and spy-eyes in the sky.  They'll send infiltrators and political officers into every facet of society -- if three people gather on a street, it'll be a good bet that one of them is a self-righteous rat!

And all because you didn't come out on Friday.

Like the butterfly that twitched its wings in Africa, which added a whisper to a breath of air which added a puff to a breeze which grew into a gale that burgeoned into a hurricane that destroyed the entire east coast of America, this hypocritical trend toward saccharine moral purity MUST BE STOPPED!  And the only way to stop it is to drink!

Come with me and fight this treacly horror, this Death By a Thousand Cuts that Freedom is succumbing to, this Blanding of America!  Raise a glass against the Inquisition, because

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!



It's Alive!  It's Alive! -- Who says that humans are the only intelligent life on Planet Earth?  There are others, many others, and they're closer than you think...
 


You give a Vulcan an Education -- and how does he treat you?  Well, take a number, this might take awhile:
 
The Spaceship Enterprise, laughingly referred to throughout Starfleet as "Kirk's Bordello", or "The Best Little Whorehouse in Vega", creaks its way around the planet Kondum in the constellation Libido, its degenerate orbit decaying like a fourteen year-old's morals on an Amsterdam street corner.

Kirk: Boy, it's good to be back home.

Sulu: Captain, our orbit is decaying.  If we don't pull out, we're going to burn up in Kondum's atmosphere.

Kirk: Pull out?  Don't worry, we'll pull out before we come ...

Bones: To our senses?

Spock: To a conclusion?

Checkoff (getting into the game): Or to a point?

Kirk: Enough!  You guys are really starting to ...

Bones: Get on your nerves?

Czechov: Torque you off?

Spock: Intimidate you with our preposterously massive intellects?

Kirk (grates his teeth): Dammit, if you don't stop this I'll have to ...

Bones: Find another pimp?

Sulu: Kick my ass ... again?

Spock: Get a hair transplant?

Kirk: Oh well, I guess I'll just ...

Spock:  Blah-Blah-Blah.  I cannot lie Captain, so I must stand when I sleep.

Bones: Go siddown and shut up Jim.  We'll call you when we've found those slutty space alien women you was wantin' to reproduce with 'n everthang.

Kirk (sighs): That's what I get for letting them join Mensa...
 

Zing-g-g-g!


Pure Deid Br-r-rilliant! -- Got on the phone to Scotty today.  He had some fine words of wisdom.  I have no idea what he actually said, but after a pint or two of Mackeson's and single malt, its cadence and sheer linguistic prowess just blew me away.  Read this aloud in class or at work.  The babes just love that highland burr!
 
Och, yae nae tipple wit' oot a brae noo.  Ye cannae kragga kindrin dr-r-room.  Laek neuw braggin' in the scudders on the next dae.  Tis a foin kraed-hearted lad a bin-drin-drin-skaggin dindaloo nagged nigh to yon graeve wit' oot a widder to crae far 'im.

Soo, wee foind a foin pub fer not a hoigh pounder-r, and bonny lasses a-totin' yer-r pint.  Foony naem tho, "Pee Jae's" or-r the lahk.  Doon't rahtly caer whoot 'name is, long ahs thaer's br-roo!  Aye!
 

'Ere's to yaer, ye blootered, wee-man and woo-man!
 


Double-Wide, Copyright © 1999 by Jim Parnell

Jim Parnell generates bugs for a living -- the ones that infest your computer.   As a gesture of foolhardy bravado, he plans to be on full life-support in a commercial airliner booking flights and making e-trades at 23:59:59, December 31, 1999.

You can e-mail Jim Parnell at bubba@recomnet.net


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