Motivational Growth

1

(8-bit music)

(tv noises)

(8-bit music)

His name was Kent.

He was my television set.

He died somewhere around week 67.

Odd. I'd always thought I'd be the first to go.

Oh...no!

No!

(clicking remote)

No, no, no, no!

No, no, f***!

(exasperated sighing)

(clicking remote)

(whimpering)

(slow steady beat turning into techno music)

Aaaahhhh!!!

(sobbing)

Kent was really the only piece

of non-furniture I half-expected

to stay with me through this whole thing.

All of the fish had given themselves up

to a more aerated lifestyle by week 10.

In March I stopped watering the house plants.

They were planning something untoward

and needed to be dealt with.

Every day is the same.

Every day I wake up to find

that absolutely nothing! changed.

If it wasn't for the sores,

I don't think I'd have a reason to get up at all.

Anyway, it's usually noon

by the time I roll my ass off the couch.

I stopped setting my alarm

sometime during the second week

There's really no point,

not necessarily in setting it, but in being alarmed.

What do I have to be alarmed about?

No bro named Brent calls me in the morning

asking me to meet for an iced latte.

No corporate success storie is on hold

because of me not showing up for a few months.

No hot little hard body is tiddling it to

a polaroid on her desk at my dumb ass.

And my f***ing television set,

just ate it like Rice KrispieTreats.

Kent...Kent, Jesus.

What the hell, man?

My seclusion has made me reconsider things;

the very meaning of life itself, in point and fact.

A few months of nothing and sooner or later,

everything starts to seem like nothing.

We had a pact, man!

A covenant.

During this sort of recognition-

of-self-worthlessness processed,

it seems one finds it easier to question things

that a normal, healthy citizen might take for granted.

For instance, my daily struggle

between the couch and the crapper.

It's not as easy as you may think it is

to sh*t when that lonely sh*t

is the absolute culmination of your entire day.

While it is necessary for all creatures

to periodically excrete unneeded

and potentially harmful substances

for prim and proper metabolic maintenance,

the impulse to indulge in this otherwise

simple, natural act, serves as

sort of a field test for people like me.

(straining)

We think a little differently

when it comes to bowel movements

because they are an expression of life.

And life is hateful

Life is death, and pain, and anger,

(straining)

and solitude, and fury, all wrapped up

in a tricky little package and sold to you

like you should really be into this sh*t.

(straining)

You know kittens?

Kittens are killers, man.

They are killing machines.

They aren't playing with you

and your milkring, or your shoelace,

or that organic yuppie yarn you use on the bus

to show everyone how unique you are for knitting.

(straining)

They're training to f*** some other animal up.

Pull the legs off the spider, eat the eyeballs

out of a pigeon, that's life.

That right there is life, man.

Life is sh*t.

Now imagine that that sh*t right there

was the highlight of your day.

That sh*t is the sh*t I have been fighting

everyday for the last six months on this island earth.

Without Kent, all I have is a semi-regular

sh*t to get worked up about.

Not anymore.

This sh*t, that sh*t ends right here.

If you mix 2 parts common household bleach

and 1 part sulfuric acid, you get chlorine gas.

Boosh.

Chlorine gas was wildly used during

the first world war as a biological

contaminant. To kill people, lots of people.

If sulfuric acid isn't immediately available,

you could probably make do with any

common ammonia based glass cleaner, I think.

Let's find out.

The direct effect of so potent a mixture

in a case such as my own? Six months

of torturous, pointless, soul-sucking

seclusion brought to one disgustingly glorious end,

and one seriously clean-ass bathtub.

(vent whirring)

My name's Ian, by the way.

(B-bit horror music)

(tv static noises)

The Mold:
Good morning, Sunshine.

Welcome back to the land of the living!

(Ian groaning)

Ian:
What the christ happened?

The Mold:
You okay buckaroo?

You still in orbit?

(Ian coughing)

Man, you're a real dream you knew that?

Hey, you listening to me nosebleed?

Hey Jack, you were going

for pinks back there, huh?

That was the real deal,

That was real deal, what with the tub full of short stuff.

What are you after, aftermath?

Ian:
Oh sh*t, that didn't work at all.

The Mold:
Jlack, do The Mold a real solid, alright?

Grab up all of your jacks and

marbles and bouncy balls and listen to me

for a second. Can you do that, Jack?

Ian:
My name's Ian.

The Mold:
Oh The Mold knows,Jack,The Mold knows.

(The Mold laughs)

Ian:
I'm talking to the grime now.

God, what the f*** did I do to my head?

They say, and Blue Oyster Cult

will totally back me up on this,

that 40,000 men and women die everyday.

Being that there are only 1,444 seconds

in any given 24-hour period, it seems

seriously screwed up to me that I have failed

so righteously a task that the rest of the world

seems perfectly capable of committing

something like 30 times a f***ing second.

In the time it takes me to walk

from the shitter to the sitter,

60 average, every-day, run-of-the-goddamn-mill

people manage to shuffle off.

You know, failure at any number of

standard tasks can end in death.

You fail at driving? Dead.

You fail at crossing the street? Dead.

You fail at preparing certain forms

of pacific rim seafood? Neuro-toxic shock

a pretty wild, pre-death state, but then, dead.

What happens if you fail at suicide?

You fail at death itself.

Me, that's what.

At least I've got Kent.

(tv explodes)

F***!

(dialing phone)

Yes, hello, I'm looking for someone

to come fix my television.

No, no, yes, no well, you see it's an old

sort of thing, no I don't think plasma

was even invented at the time, no,

wait what even is plasma?

I just need to find a place to get this fixed,

can you get me that?

ATV repair place, thank you.

Hi there, my TV is out and

I need someone to come fix it.

I have no idea what plasma even is,

so I don't think so, I don't know,

I'd have to ask my dad, but he's dead, so.

Look it's like a cabinet with a TV in it.

It's something you'd imagine

microwave TV dinners were invented for.

It's old, it's made from wood.

Tree wood. From trees.

My uncle used to call it "The Commodore",

l always just called him Kent.

You know "The Commodore" like

in the navy or star fleet or something.

Today would be best, yeah.

I don't know, anytime between

now and tomorrow works for me.

Sure, it's Ian Folliver,

606 South Brightmore number 108.

No, yeah - I'll be here.

That front door and I have a bit of a thing

in so much that I've pretty much

stayed away from it unless

there was pizza on the other side.

There's this kind of forcefield

keeping me from going through there.

A force-of-will field.

Out there it's f***ing crazy.

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