UNREMITTING FAILURE

Mrs. UF Leaves for Germany Tomorrow

And thus commences our new career as a swinger.  What she doesn't know can't hurt her, right?  We're going to take off our wedding ring, buy a classy toupee and a shirt with wide lapels, and take the nearest bus to Infidelity City.  In homage of the Eagles, maybe we'll stop in the "cheatin' part of town" on the way over.

Don't get us wrong.  We take our marital vows seriously.  But as everybody knows they don't apply when your spouse is an another continent.  It's like if your husband or wife was an astonaut and walking on the Moon.  You'd have total permission to rut with somebody else.  It's called the Moon Exception.  Off the planet, and you're off to the races.  Anything goes.

We're pretty sure we won't have any problem attracting pulchritudinous females.  We're talking voluptuous, scrumptious, comely, hot as shit women.  We're sure because we're deluded.  Were we actually to go out there, we'd probably attract nothing but crazy redheads, which as anybody who has ever dated a redhead knows is a redundancy. 

Truth is, we don't think we have infidelity in us anymore.  It's too much trouble.  Cheating's time-consuming, nerve-wracking and guilt-provoking.  Besides, we're lazy.  No, our stepping out on the marriage days are over, over before they even began.

The King of Pop

It's June 30 and you're reading Unremitting Failure, the blog that cares.  Cares about the environment, about world hunger, about the unexpected death of Michael Jackson.  We were indisposed the day it happened, and when we saw the headline on the front page of the newspaper the day after we cried, "My God, No!" Like every single human being in the world, we were enthralled by the King of Pop when Thriller hit.  We bought a single glove and a glittering military-style jacket, and laid out hundreds of bucks to learn how to moondance.   And like everybody else we envied Bubbles, the chimp who got to spend his every moment in the Divine One's Peter Panlike presence.  But as Robert Frost said, "Nothing gold can stay," and we watched sadly as Michael squandered his gifts and got caught up in a whirlpool of bizarre behavior, disfiguring cosmetic surgery, and daring baby-dangling.  Into the closet went our single glove and glittering jacket, along with our complete collection of Michael's music. But now that Michael's dead we feel terrible, terrible that we abandoned him, like King Lear on his blasted heath, to his lonely attempts to perpetuate a permanent childhood.  But it doesn't matter.  He's in Heaven now, no doubt, inappropriately touching children who died before their time.

"Not another minute will your money buy"

Kansas was wrong.  Extra time can be purchased at $399 per minute at any WalMart.

Animal Cracked

Yesterday we went into a coffee shop and they gave us two animal crackers along with our coffee.  We thought, "Great" until we noticed that one of the animal crackers was missing a leg.  It was broken off.  And we thought, "What are we supposed to be with a lame animal cracker?"  We could hardly eat it, it was defective.  We finally took it to the back of the coffeeshop and shot it.  When an animal cracker loses a leg, there's not much to be done but put it out of its misery.

It was one of those public places where they play loud dance music.  We don't get it.  Nobody dances in a cafe.  We didn't see any glow sticks. It wasn't a rave, we weren't all touchy feely on E. Sitting there depressed by the music and the animal cracker we had to put out of its misery we thought of W.G. Sebald's description of one of his characters as "one of thoes who are born to lead inconsolable lives."

We were trying to read Stendhal's The Red and the Black.  What a bore.  The only good sentence goes "After several months of unremitting application Julian still looked as if he were thinking."   We suspect that the People who say The Red and the Black is a great book haven't actually read it. 
The book should actually be called The Unread and the Black.

A Sudden Hankering

For a bowl of French Ennui Soup.

Coming Out Via Exorcism

We were amused this morning to read about a Connecticut church that goes in for exorcisms as a "cure" for homosexuality.  "Rip it from his throat!" the article quotes a member of the congregation as shouting.  "Come on you homosexual demon!  You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now!"  Why she didn't throw in "Get thee hence, demon who is neat and not averse to a bit of cross-dressing!" we'll never know.  There will always be idiots, idiots here and there and everywhere, but some idiots are truly inspiring in their idiocy.  They go above and beyond.  They stay up late at night, devising  new and thrilling forms of idiocy, forms that are breathtaking in their moronic scope and sheer imbecilic genius. And idiocy's one demon you can't exorcise.  If it's in you, it's not going anywhere.  You're stuck with it for life.

In Anticipation of the 4th July

We give you Henry Miller, who described America as a "grand chancre on a worn-out cock."

The Real World

We hate it when the real world closes in.  MTV's Real World that is.  As if it isn't bad enough that the L. Ron Hubbard House is but a good stone's throw from UF Headquarters, this year's RW cast has moved in up the block.  What a revolting development.  Now the neighborhood is bound to be crawling with the kinds of loathsome narcissists who will do absolutely anything to become a celebrity.  Frankly, we don't need the competition.

Help me jesus!

We used to drink.  Mostly beer, but we liked the hard stuff too.  Pity it didn't like us back.  Our favorite was tequila.  One sip and we were borracho.  We adopted a bad Mexican accent and made an ass of ourselves in public.  One time we woke up with a tremendous tequila hangover.  We had to go to work but we reeked of the stuff.  It was like we were wearing a serape made from mescal and anybody within three feet said, "You reek of Mexican mad juice, loco bucko."  Somewhere we heard that a shot of vinegar would take away the reek, so we drank a shot of vinegar.  Terrible mistake.  One drink we learned to fear was your common gin and tonic.  We drank G&Ts one entire summer with our friend Steds, and the two of us spent many a soused evening calling the PTL Club Christian Help Hotline, pretending we were going to kill ourselves.  The old ladies at the other end always did their best to keep us alive, God bless them.  They urged us to find Jesus and occasionally we'd shout, "Eureka, I'm saved!" just to make them feel better.  The experience taught us it's so easy to make somebody's day.  All you have to do is get falling down drunk and tell them you intend to commit suicide.

Marijuana

Grass, pot, reefer, weed, dope, ganja, Moms Mabley--no matter what you call it, it's lethal.  Kids think marijuana is a harmless "kick."  They're wrong.  Your average marijuana "trip" can last anywhere from three hours to the rest of your life in a straightjacket on a locked mental ward.

Most kids try marijuana because it's "the thing to do."  It's "hip." They know nothing of the baleful health effects of "boosting up" to "spliff city".   These include lung damage, inexplicable fits of laughter, and rickets.  

There are many people in favor of legalization.  These "grasshoppers" or "tea heads" invariably turn out to be dealers, who hang outside elementary schools to introduce kids to the "green genii." 

Parents bear some of the blame for failing to keep their kids from becoming users.  They fail to detect the warning signs that their children are actively "geeking for reefer," a state of withdrawal that occurs when the user can't get his or her hands on the next "hookah hit."  Such warning signs include mirth, a heightened awareness of the utter absurdity of all the things unstoned people take seriously, and a serious hankering for Ring Dings.

When we were young we tried marijuana and instantly became addicted.  We spent 14 years as a slave to the marijuana monkey, and would do anything to secure a "stash."  Many was the night we spent listening to Tarkus at our dealer's apartment.  You can't sink much lower than ELP.  Physicians tell us we're lucky we're not insane. 

Marijuana can even kill you.  True, you'd have to smoke several thousand pounds in a very short period of time, a physical impossibility.  But we'll show you plenty of heads willing to give it their best shot.