[Editor’s Note: As part of the Moustache Club of America’s tenth anniversary celebration, we have decided to begin republishing the collected works of our beloved co-founder the Passion of the Christ. And let us include a “trigger warning” of sorts: Viewer discretion is advised.]
1. This person lived to be 103. When he was 103 every member of his family gathered for his semi-annual birthday celebration (he was actually something like 166, but some years he didn’t feel like making a fuss over his exceptional bad luck; after all, he was a tiny old skeleton with a few shriveled organs dangling from the bones). Why wouldn’t God let him die? In response to this silent prayer, his guests were all murdered by clouds that used giant potato peelers to skin their victims alive. Then these murderous clouds forced the old man to eat the resultant mound of flesh. He swelled up like a balloon and was popped by a lightning bolt shot out of God’s disturbingly minuscule penis.
2. “The strangest thing I ever did, babe,” Brian Powell said as he put his arm around the waist of the receptionist, as played by Alfre Woodard, “Was I dunno,” he said, then kissed her. She kissed him and, let me tell all you kiddos, their kiss and subsequent kisses moved mountains.
“Is your love like a motorcycle,” the receptionist asked, standing to her feet as Powell did the same and looking stern… standoffish, but then asking in a husky… erotic tone, “Or a burning building.” Building?
“Oh, it’s a building what’s burnin’ to the fuckin’ ground, missy,” Powell said in a thick southern accent, kissing the receptionist’s neck and caressing her supple… black breasts and massaging her privates with his wimpy but tender hand. “My love’s like prescription-grade Drano, you know? It’ll clean your fucking spleen!”
They fucked and it was fucking great. Old women are the tops. I love them. They never want to marry me, though. And I’m the marrying kind, so I end up marrying stupid young airheads who hate me. Such is love or life or whatever, though, eh?
3. The papa bear hoped his wife had gotten him a rimjob for the religious holiday. He so wanted a rimjob. The kids had gotten their basketball hoops and athletic wear or dolls or whatever and he’d gotten his wife some piece of jewelry he’d picked at random, so where was his fucking rimjob, man? He was tired of this shit, which is why, in a crowded convenience mart, wearing a black nylon jacket and sporting a heavily-gelled ‘do or ‘doo or however it’s spelled, he saw fit to say, “Tired of this fucking shit.” So “tired of this fucking shit,” was he, that he neglected to even preface the statement with “I’m.” He wanted to get the statement out there so badly that it was so fucking terse, man, whined the guy who masturbated to some quality he referred to as “terseness.” I just jacked off to it, man. I couldn’t take it. That was the most terse shit I’ve ever seen, man.
4. I think it’s strange that rap and however you want to refer to singer-songwriter music seem like they’re so incredibly different but they’re actually quite similar upon closer inspection. They’re the two genres of music where lyrics really matter or at least should really matter. Bob Dylan? 2-Pac? These are two sides of the same coin, the haughty Professor J. Ruggleteapot, who was not English in the British sense but was nonetheless portrayed by Peter O’Toole, explained to his class. None of them were paying him any mind. They were ready — more than ready, in fact — to go on holiday.
5. I don’t need a dryer. Dryers are a scam. The government keeps the surveillance devices in dryers. I just let my clothes sit and dry naturally, said the idiot, who was some sort of inveterate loser. He had a normal IQ and came from a decent home, but he was nonetheless unable to do much of anything, be it of little or great import.
6. I was riding the bus.
Why were you riding the bus?
I had to go somewhere.
Where did you have to go? I don’t believe you.
You never believe me.
Why were you on the bus?
I had to go somewhere.
7. “Raised on a bag of potato chips is what he was,” said the old man smoking a corncob pipe. He took the pipe out of his mouth before adding, “A little clock that wouldn’t float in water if you put a dozen barrels in it… hmph. Soda fountains just aren’t what they used to be.” Then, like a bolt from the blue, his head broke open and it resembled runny Stouffer’s lasagna except that after a lumpy chunk had fallen off and onto his shoulder his head was filled with a big entangled spool of mint green dental floss. “Don’t touch it!” he said, grabbing my arm. “Don’t touch it, you little brat! It’s my brain! It’s my brain! It’s my brain!” he screamed in a scary old man voice right in my face. I fell to the floor and whimpered, utterly horrified. He grinned and made some sick moaning noise. “I’ll be a devil before death’s done.”
8. There is no new love. Love is the new love, said the idiot. He was nonetheless worshipped and idolized by millions and declared the voice of a generation by pundits and men with no necks alike. Later, when he was washed up and mostly broke, the idiot — now a disgraced idiot — claimed that his original message (cf. the first sentence of this paragraph) had been misconstrued and what he actually meant was that love is nothing, not that you should love people or whatever. His attempt to convert himself from inspirational idiot to pessimistic idiot failed, though, as everyone continued to ignore him just as they’d been doing since they realized he had nothing but that one pathetic attempt at poignancy to offer anyone. Most people were shocked and outraged to learn that he hadn’t just suicided himself. What did he have to live for? they wondered. No one, not even the best scientists, could come up with an answer.
9. When I first met Brian Powell he was a stick of Juicy Fruit in a package of five such sticks. I purchased the package at the grocery store, took it home, tore it open, chewed on Powell for a little while and then stuck him under a desk. Then my boyfriend came over and he didn’t beat me or anything! I feel so loved. Happy holidays. Write back soon!
10. “Listen, shitface,” Brian Powell barked into the phone.
Wait a minute.
“Listen, shitface,” Brian Powell said with eerie calm. “I want a pizza. I want a pizza with everything.”
“What’s ‘everything,’ sir?” the confused fellow on the other end of the line asked. He’d said his name was John, but who can remember? It was more than two seconds ago, after all. Great. “Sir?”
Powell shut his eyes. “It’s a pizza with everything, boyo,” he said, his calm giving way to obvious anger. “I want a fucking pizza and — ”
“Well, we have — ”
“What? What do you got? You got shit, that’s what you got! You won’t even let me have chunks of corndog or a whole big fucking cucumber on my pizza and now you’re… Christ, I’m sorry, John, it’s just that I’ve been going through some pretty rough times, you know?”
“I, uhm… sir, I need to — ” the confused fellow said nervously… awkwardly.
“My wife left me, you know? She stole my bass boat, too, that bitch. Not before I punched her in her fucking piggie little face, though. She was a mong, kid,” Powell said, kicking back and lighting up a cigarette.
“A mong?”
“A retard, you troll. I don’t want any crust on that pie, by the way, and if it’s cut into any kind of slices or shapes I’ll burn your fucking house down, get it? Now where was I?” Powell puffed his fag and thought for a moment. “Ah, yes. I was raised in Yellowknife, kid. Know where that is?”
“Uh…” was all the stupid fuck at the fucking dumbass pizza place could say. They never wanted to hear what you had to say. Sometimes you just wanted to talk to somebody about your problems, but all they were concerned with was whether or not you wanted “delivery” or “carry-out” and were interested in hearing about specials and so forth.
“It’s in Canada, dipshit. Between the border of Russia and Canada, that is. The borderline, I mean. Are you laughing at me, you fucking prick? I know damn well that I have a speech impediment!” Powell banged the phone on the wall several times, chipping the shitty plaster in his shitty apartment in the shitty part of town on the shitty side of the tracks, his loose sweatpants held up by means of a motorcycle’s drive chain wrapped around his waist. He isn’t even wearing pants that have belt loops, for fuck’s sake. “How dare you laugh at me!” he roared, banging the phone on the wall again. “I should get a discount on that pizza for this, you insensitive — ”
“Sir, I still need to — ”
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” someone said. I can’t recall if it was Powell or the kid (who was probably a middle-aged man, but everybody who works in any way with pizza must be referred to as a “kid” whenever possible) at the pizza place or neither of the above. It may have been some girl or girls who said it to Powell when he made unwanted advances ‘pon them or maybe they all hated him and that’s why they were always smashing his reflection with their little fists and feet. He hated the way they looked at him, you know. Hard to describe how that was and how it made him feel. Usually he threw up a few times, though. He was in pretty bad shape.
They can hear me always. I don’t know who they are, really. Would it be any better or worse if I did? I don’t think so. They can exist and I can exist and neither of us has to know it.
