Albuterol For The Soul – LittleCubeNews.com

Nothing is worse than a guy who rocks too hard for the opening act. Even the people who are there only for the opening act aren’t drunk enough to join him, and one of them is probably sober enough to say, “Can you stop talking? This is my favorite band!” At least, that’s what she screamed at me last Friday. It may seem like rocking too hard is not that bad when the same night began with me yelling at some people I work with for not knowing who Hunter Thompson was and ended with me urinating off a gazebo in the middle of Tempe, Arizona. But you’d be wrong. You never want to rock too hard for the opening act.

Some would say it’s not a surprise something like this happened because of my history. Having long hair for the majority of my life, I had to be prepared to rock (or possibly recite poetry) at the drop of a dime. If someone said, “Rock!” (or possibly, “Keats!”), and I couldn’t respond, I would be labeled a “poseur” and get severely beaten at once. Even with short hair now, I still have that large reservoir of rock stored inside me which acts like adrenaline, so I can overdue it any time.

Again, to understand what a faux pas it really is, you only have to look at the bookend events. After berating my co-workers for not having read Fear & Loathing, I went on to complain that Hunter Thompson’s plan to have his ashes fired from a gun would ruin my own plan to wheel out a surprise cannon at the last second of my funeral to fire my corpse into the ocean. Eight Red Stripes in an hour will apparently make worlds collide that I had succeeded my whole life in keeping apart. One is the world where I keep my head down at work and make sure not to say anything. The other world is the one where I stay up at nights trying to decide if my body should loft into the ocean, bounce off a trampoline into the ocean, or skip like a stone until it hits the side of a boat. Even horrified looks and one stranger who turned around to proclaim me “morbid” could not stop me from talking.

In fact, those looks only encouraged me to continue with the tale of how that same story resulted in college crazy tests. I always knew college was for experimentation, but I thought that meant gay stuff, not being strapped to a chair with electrodes wired to my head and being forced to watch things like the suicide scene from An Officer and a Gentleman. I had “jokingly” wrote about my death cannon in a Psychology 101 paper, and before I knew it, I was fulfilling my lab requirement by being hooked up to a mammoth super computer. After the last battery of trials (which involved distinguishing from a series of pictures which creepy, distorted face looked the happiest), the technician told me I could probably get some free counseling at the University hospital. I met that proposal with a hearty chuckle, and she asked me to sit back down for a talk. At that point, I ran away. Of course, I dropped the class the next day, which if you ask me, is a pretty funny story of why I had to take American Sign Language as an elective the following summer. It was not that funny according to my worried audience.

I like to leave only when things can’t get much worse, and since our boss wasn’t there for me to make a pass at, I finally went to meet some other friends at a dirtbag, townie bar. This is where the over-rocking occurred. It is also where I talked to the band just beforehand. Normally, I don’t talk to famous musicians because I have to assume most of them are human, and my human theory is that if you can afford to be an asshole, you probably will be. Band members can afford it, but the guy we were talking to was pretty cool. He continued to be cool right up until he was deliberating about the different aspects of improvisational song writing and I whispered at my friend Steve to “show him your tits!” much too loudly.

After the rocking, instead of being verbally shamed by any witnesses, I hopped the fence in back and ran away (kind of like in college). Long time friends know of my proclivity to “go wanderin’” when I have too many drinks. Some even wanted to make “Where the fuck is Nathan?” shirts, but that would have cost money which would have cut into beer funds which might have prevented them from actually asking, “Where the fuck is Nathan?” the following Friday when I would have probably disappeared from the back seat while we were at a gas station. I finally ended up at the aforementioned gazebo relieving myself and muttering Thompson quotes about the ineptitude of the bastard law enforcing swine who were out to get me.

he irony is that the cops did get me for something far worse than public urination off a historical landmark the following weekend, but that is a story for a different time assuming I make it through jail alive. Even if they’d nabbed me that moment, it wouldn’t have been for that most grievous of infractions… which was actually stealing a glass from the bar and throwing it against an office building on the way to the gazebo. But rocking too hard for the opening act – that’s a close second.

My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys. I don’t remember much about the NFL Superbowl this year because I accidentally had my TV turned to the Animal Planet channel as the game was starting. They were running something called Puppy Bowl. It was completely idiotic – just shots of dogs playing in a cage painted to look like a football field. I spent most of the next 3 hours on the phone trying to contact anyone at Animal Planet to pitch them my idea for a little something called Amazing Monkey Bowl. I can’t go into details for obvious reasons, but once I finally get a hold of them, I think next year’s Animal Planet lineup for Super Sunday will be a little more exciting.

I did catch most of the much heralded Superbowl commercials. As usual, some of them featured apes. The one that made me the angriest was the one where a guy is disgruntled because he has to work with a “bunch of monkeys”. Of course, they literally are monkeys. I’m not even sure what the ad was for – I’m assuming cell phones or beer. But if I could boycott both, I would. Most of the animal actors, stump tailed Macaques as far as I could tell, were reduced to whoopee cushion jokes. Meanwhile, it has been proven in a laboratory setting that these chimps are more than capable of stapling, three-hole punching, rearranging boxes to save space, and collating multiple sheets of paper.

I work with a guy who can barely make the coffee the in the morning. He would be easily replaceable by most any species of simian, and I would have much more fun playing Hearts over our computer network with it. Shoot the moon, Mr. Bananas! My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys.

Sometime after graduation but before you attempt to set foot in the workforce, before even typing a resume, you must first ask yourself the most important question: “Do I really need a job?”. If you said yes, you are like most people. If you are like me, then you said, “Probably… I guess… but it would it be a lot more fun to only apply for employment opportunities I will never get… jobs I would be ashamed to have if I ever did.” It was in this spirit that I tried my hardest (i.e., completely made up a resume and several cover letters) to land several “dream” jobs, one of which was reviewing pornographic tapes for the largest chain of adult video shops in my state, the Castle Boutique Megastore. It was a futile effort. Today, I work for a school (that is, at least until a perceptive student discovers this web site and tells his mom). What follows are a series of faxes sent to the Castle Boutique. Note: These are for mature audiences only.

FAX
TO: Jim
DATE: March 3, 1999
______________________________________________

Attached is my resume for the position of video reviewer with the Castle Superstore Corporation. Thank you for your consideration.

While I may not have a degree in Human Sexuality, as your newspaper ad suggested any potential employee might, I do have a degree in Media Arts. This is a liberal course of study that provided an opportunity to learn about a wide array of things, including psychology and sexuality. The requirements of the major required that I take at least one class in gay Asian pornography. I took several.

Working as a manager in a video store, I had the opportunity to watch more movies than I ever wanted, and because they were free, I felt a certain responsibility to do so. I took to writing scathing reviews for many of them as a hobby (samples available upon request). Unfortunately, few of these reviews included phrases like “knob slobber” or “snatch daddy”. As I grew more and more disgusted with mainstream, formulaic Hollywood cinema, I began to watch more low-budget gangbangs. The Godfather disappeared from the list of my top five favorite movies and was replaced by Buttman in Europe.

I understand that many people may not want to know how good a porno film may actually be, just how many anal reamings there are in the first thirty minutes. Luckily, I am also skilled in the art of counting and categorization. If I were called upon to subjectively grade movies, I already have a rating system in place- wet towels. An average movie would get three, as in that is how many wet towels an erection this movie produced could hold up. The best rating is five wet towels, the worst is a hand cloth.

I appreciate your time and look forward to an interview.

FAX
TO: Joan
DATE: March 19, 1999
______________________________________________

Attached is my resume for the position of video reviewer with the Castle Superstore Corporation. I am submitting it for the second time, as it appears you are a new human resource manager.

While your ad suggested that any applicant should have a degree in human sexuality, I cannot imagine that anyone with such a degree was hoping to watch pornographic movies in the basement of an office building as they worked towards graduation. I would like to respectfully suggest that a degree in media arts might be sufficient. And of course, I do not know for a fact that a basement is where you put your video reviewers, but I would not mind it. In fact, I would prefer it.

Because of my course of study in college, more than one motion picture has been subjected to my critical eye. Few escaped with anything less than a complete and critical dissection of their content. I understand the technical aspects of film, from lighting to blocking, and the creative side as well- the writing, the direction, the acting! The only difference between those movies and the ones I hope to review for your company would be standards. Where as most Hollywood films require only one climax to be successful, the kind you carry would need at least seven.

I worked for over a year as a manager in a video store. As such, I have developed a healthy amount of knowledge concerning the industry’s practices and procedures in its distribution outlets. I am also street smart, so I know that it would be suicide for any retail store to publish bad opinions of its own product. I am perfectly willing to end every one of my reviews with a favorable catch phrase, something along the lines of, “…but I did ruin my pants!”

I also have a unique rating system in place I can use. It is not a clever perversion of the “thumbs” system either, wherein a particularly bad feature would get “two thumbs up the ass.” Rather, it is based on wet towels (and neither is it an extreme extension of the wet Kleenex rating scale). It is much more intriguing and I think worth discussing in an interview.

Thank you for your consideration.

FAX
TO: Joan
DATE: March 21, 1999
______________________________________________

Since my last submission, I noticed your ad for video reviewer in the classifieds has changed. The sentence “Requires a Degree in Human Sexuality” has been moved to the top, bolded, capitalized, and then repeated at the bottom. I assume this is because you received a fair share of resumes from drop outs who are unqualified and consider reviewing porno films the pinnacle of success. I am nothing like those people, as I have never dropped out.

In fact, I now have a degree in Human Sexuality, which I recently acquired from www.BogusDegrees.com. It may sound a bit dubious, but they assured me they are an accredited institution.

I also have a degree in media arts, which I previously mentioned. I failed to point out my minor in philosophy. You may wonder how this particular discipline relates to the position I’m applying for. Unfortunately, your industry has often been criticized as “demeaning to women”, “immoral”, and “one step away from legalized prostitution”. It takes a trained mind to judiciously dismiss these arguments for what they are- lunatic ravings. I have no ethical issues with this business, and if I ever develop one, I would be quick to convince myself I am not actually working in the business, but around it- a journalistic watchdog endowed with the responsibility to determine the “Wow!” factor of any “facial” put before me.

At this point, I would also like to point out what a strong stomach I have. I imagine this is a requirement in an age where the boundaries of what can be shown in a triple-X video are being pushed. If you have a large staff of reviewers working in different departments, I would certainly prefer a position where I would be exposed to as few “scope and rope” videos as possible. I am not even sure if “scope and rope” is an actual term. I made it up. But if it is, I sure as hell do not want to know what it means.

I am looking forward to our eventual interview.

FAX
TO: Joan
DATE: March 27, 1999
______________________________________________

Since my last fax, I have been to a job fair, noticed a booth for your company, and filled out an application for the position of video reviewer. I did not mention my
previous attempts to get this job, as I can see only a two scenarios regarding them. One, my cover letters are making the rounds in the corporate office, impressing everyone, and it is taking time to schedule a welcome party appropriate to my hiring. Two, and the more likely scenario I think, is that everything I submitted has been saved only to serve as examples in the human resource department as words and phrases that would prevent Bill Gates from being hired to run your tech department.

Still, I think I made a favorable impression at the fair, as I wasn’t giggling when I approached your counter, and you saw fit to give me a personality test based on my resume. It is this test which I am writing to you about, a test which I believe is the new reason why you aren’t calling me.

While most would consider these tests simple, straightforward quizzes, I consider them grueling wit matches. Take this yes or no statement, for example, “I have planned out how to steal things, but have never actually done it.” I assume the perfect applicant would say “no” to this question, but the natural inference to this answer could either be that such a person doesn’t sit around scheming robberies, or it could be this person has thought about stealing something and carried through with his plans. Personally, I have thought about how to steal merchandise in the past, but only to be one step ahead of the tricky little high school freshman who worked under me. All of my other thieving fantasies have involved things like Picassos or entire buildings, tasks more suitable to my intellect.

What’s more, there are six more questions almost identical to the one above throughout the test, probably to gauge the consistency of one’s answers. Yet, there are subtle semantic differences in each one, obviously unintended, but completely changing the meaning of each. The ultimate point is this- your cheap paper exams cannot begin to measure the depth of my ability to capture the essence of Back Door Bunnies 15 in one paragraph.

I look forward to an interview.

Into the Blue - The best I can say about this movie is that it had the most gratuitous ass-shots I’d ever seen in something rated PG-13. I have to say I was both surprised and delighted by Jessica Alba’s and Paul Walker’s rear ends in what was an otherwise dull affair. The only other good part was when the gratuity proliferated to crotch shots at the end as Jessica punched and squeezed the testicles of an evil pirate lackey before tossing him in the water. Apparently, a shark smelled the blood and nuts because the pirate was soon eaten.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose – A mostly successful amalgamation of the courtroom drama and satanic horror flick. It was not the first, though, because I had a great idea for one years ago. I wasn’t sure what the plot was about even then but the trailer went something like this: An unscored, uncut scene of Michael Moriarity (reprising his role as the baddest Executive ADA in New York, Ben Stone) grilling some normal, white collar, Republicano looking dude about a horrible crime for about half-a-minute. Then he finishes a question with, “… and isn’t that true… demon?!” There is an awkward pause before the defense attorney screams, “Objection!”. Then Stone reaches under the table because he rigged a gun under there just like Gary Busey did in The Firm except this time it’s a shotgun and he pulls it out and yells, “Overruled!” The defendant hisses and shows his Vampire teeth for about a second before his head completely explodes and we see Stone standing there with a smoking barrel. The screen slowly fades to black and shows the title while we hear the judge timidly say, “I… think it’s my job to rule on objections?” That adds a moment of levity but then everything is serious again when the last shot is of Moriarty and every other great fired Law & Order cast member (Chris Noth, Richard Brooks, Jill Hennessy, Dann Floreck, etc.) standing in a sewer with flashlights and crossbows as Stone says, “Ok, let’s do this.” Granted, this would have to be an internet-only trailer because of its coolness/goriness, but I think it would build good buzz.

Murderball – This is supposed to be an inspirational film but if you are anything like me you will feel like a bad human being after watching it. It made me kind of mad that every murderballer (paraplegic rugby player) had extremely hot girlfriends. Even the Captain Dan character had one. Then I felt even worse after giggling when it showed footage from an old 80’s video about quads having sex.

No One Knows – This is a foreign movie about four young siblings who survive alone in Tokyo in a small apartment because their mom left them. This was an especially touching story for me because I think the same thing is happening in an apartment near mine inhabited by nine or ten small Mexican children. I’m led to believe this because they are always playing in the parking lot and I once glimpsed inside their doorway – the place was a pig sty and smelled like dog food even though I’ve never seen a pet in there. I’ve also seen four of the little munchkins carrying a laundry basket down to the laundry room, each one struggling to hold up his or her side of the basket. This was actually kind of cute and made me wonder if I should begin to raise them as my own. In my mind I saw a montage of us painting the walls, building some neat bunk beds in the living room, and learning to cook Ramen noodles. We would walk through Target with each of them holding onto a rope tied to my waist while we shopped for clothes. Every now and then, the one named Santiago would come to my apartment and sleep on the couch because of nightmares about the terrible things that could’ve happened to his missing mom. The movie would be called Only Nathan Knows.

Flightplan – It is annoying to me when otherwise reputable critics will sacrifice their opinion in order to include some shrewd play on words in their reviews. I can only imagine this is what happened when Roger Ebert called Flightplan “airtight”. Other recent examples might be “It doesn’t suck!” for Underworld: Evolution or “Set sail for the greatest movie of the year!” for The Island or even “That was really good!” for Crash. Needless to say, there were quite a few holes in Flightplan’s plot. Plus, it spent most of its time casting Sean Bean and Peter Sarsgaard in various amounts of shadowy suspicion in order to keep us guessing who the real villain was. I know Jodie Foster is an Oscar winner, but instead of her name above the title on the DVD, I would have liked to seen “Sarsgaard Versus Bean!” That’s something that I’ve never seen before, which is more than I can say for the movie.

After almost a year of being on and off different anti-depressants at my own discretion, I decided to start taking a box of something called Lexapro which a doctor had given to me from his sample closet some time ago. The only reason being I was annoyed it had taken up room in the back of my clothes closet for so long. And I was bored. And probably depressed. But mostly curious because their logo looks like a Typhoon Genie.

After several weeks of taking the tiny white pills, I was very impressed. It had achieved what Effexor, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Prozac, Zoloft, and peyote had failed to do – make me a happy drunk. I wasn’t the “throw-down” angry drunk I always wanted to be, but I wasn’t sitting in a corner with a bottle of Root Beer Schnapps either, and I think that’s a major improvement. Of course, when I wasn’t drunk, the only effect I noticed is that I was much more inclined to do jumping jacks at one in the morning than fall asleep. I think this means I should just drink more often. Not that I wasn’t without my concerns. For instance, I listen to a lot of Nick Cave – sad songs all about the nastiness of human nature. I used to tear up, but with Lexapro I started laughing until my eyes watered. If both end results involve crying, what’s the point?

Still, I figured I might as well take Lexapro on a regular basis and tried to fill a prescription. Turns out, for my insurance company to pay for something that is actually effective I would need to complete a face-to-face interview with a mental health specialist. I told them reading this website would probably clear up any doubts, but they didn’t buy it.

Sitting in the waiting room of a state’s mental health and substance abuse clinic should make anyone depressed who already isn’t. All the patients are extremely fat or extremely skinny, most of them extremely crazy, too. I sat there for two hours watching them come and then go while their nurse or therapist kept yelling the phrase, “Remember, find a group!” until they were out the front door. There was also a huge pile of charity bread in the corner, from sealed bags of hotdog buns to unwrapped loafs lying on the laminate tile floor. About half of them stopped to pick up what I had a feeling was dinner.

In addition to the obvious national social and economic crisis this group represented, it also brought up a more personal theological issue. Many of these individuals are, I’m sure, deserving to go to heaven. However, the time spent with them in the lobby was more than enough for me. How can my eternal paradise include some guy who talks to issues of Cosmopolitan while waiting for his Lithium? This is the central paradox of the Christian afterlife and why I must conclude it does not exist.

Or I am going to hell. I guess that solves the paradox, as well.

By the time I finally met my “intake specialist”, I was very tired and past the point of calculating what I thought the answers to the questions she peppered me with ought to be in order to appear hopeless enough to get my prescription filled yet not despondent enough to be assigned group therapy sessions with the Cosmo guy. After she asked me to count to 30 by three it went a little like this:

Apparently, my answers were good enough to be approved. But I quickly learned that the approval was not for Lexapro, but to be seen my another person in two weeks for another psych evaluation. I was becoming exhausted and not sure the whole process was really worth it for something that was probably a placebo anyway. Now I am waiting for that appointment and, I admit, will probably go. I figure if nothing else, I can stock up on the most important part of a sandwich. And if any future party guest asks why there is an imprint of a shoe on their bread, it will make for a very good story.

UPDATE AFTER TWO WEEKS: When I arrived, the bread was still there on the floor – though thankfully not the same bread. The psychiatrist who interviewed me this time had a shorter list of questions, although it was clear the most important ones were “Do you see or hear things others don’t?” and “Do you find the television or radio is saying things directed solely at you?”. Though I answered each negatively, anyone with even the slightest familiarity of David Hume (or any epistemological philosopher, really) would know the answer to the former question is, “How the fuck would I know?” And I firmly believe the correct reply to the latter is, “Yes, they’re called commercials.”

After all was said done, she gave me some meds – but not Lexapro! Because they don’t carry it, I get to try something else called Celexa. After some research, I found that their logo is an equally appealing Whirlwind Genie. But I also discovered “47% of patients who did not respond to the older, dated drug Celexa responded to treatment with Lexapro.” That is not the even funniest part. The doctor was actually the second in my life to open my chart up for the first time and proclaim, “Wow! Your’e still alive!?” Maybe the fact I couldn’t stop giggling for 5 minutes after she said that was the real reason I got my pills.

UPDATE AFTER FOUR WEEKS: For some reason, Celexa made my arms numb for days after drinking heavily. So, I decided to stop taking it.

My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys. If I could combine two of my favorite things into one, we’d have a show exactly like Quantum Leap in every way except that Dr. Sam Beckett would be played by a mountain gorilla instead of Scott Bakula. Aside from me hitting the Lotto, I doubt this will ever happen. Fortunately, someone has combined two of my other favorite things, monkeys and video games.

Though most credit Donkey Kong as the first video game star to be an ape, they are quite mistaken. A game created in 1961 entitled Spacewars featured an enemy spaceship piloted by an evil chimp named Megator. Many apes have been featured in video games since. One of my favorites may be George from the 80’s hit Rampage. However, I think the most important has to be Dixie Kong.

She was, I believe, the first true embodiment of female equality in a video game. Before her, Ms. Pac-Man was too docile, while later heroines like Lara Croft too objectified. Dixie Kong, first appearing in an early Nintendo 64 title, was the perfect combination of grace and action. She was also the first to make it socially acceptable for a monkey to be looked upon as a sexual symbol. And let’s face it, every game she’s been in, including the new Donkey Konga, has been one hell of a ride. My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys.