I WAS working too hard on Slack. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last, because part of my Slack IS in working too hard on Slack. But, while too much is always better than not enough, that doesn't mean it's always better than JUST enough, especially in the case of WORK.
Now it might just be that my, shall we say, "Prozac" had run out (you can't buy it in stores; it has to be ordered from Tibet and the Chinese have fucked up EVERYTHING!). Maybe it was that the generic version of my blood pressure medicine just doesn't cut it. Perhaps it was the 60 email letters in one day that started the unravelling. Maybe it was the... but let's not go into THAT.* Whatever the straw was, by Monday night, the camel's back CAVED IN as fast as if Dobbs himself had been selling it something. I saw NO SLACK ANYWHERE and NO HOPE FOR ANY, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Luckily, that perfectly, sublimely rational pebble in the front (or maybe it's the BACK!) of my brain said, "Man... I think we may have lost perspective here a bit. Remember that old adage, "I cried because I had no starter fluid, and then I met a man who had no chainsaw," and the fact that the man who SAID that line, Drelloid Mutant, blew his own brains out at age 30 or so because his diabetes was getting too bad to live with."
So when I woke up Tuesday morning, I said to myself, "I ain't gone do SHIT. I ain't gonna do it. I ain't gonna EVEN TRY. I'm gonna do what "Bob" SAID to do. For once. Not EVEN TRY. Path of Least Resistance. I'm gonna lay around here watching TV. And just do whatever normal, ordinary chores need doing. I've let myself drift too far into Church and away from "Bob," away from my SubGenius roots, lazy and good-for-nothin' as they may be." Needless to say, I didn't lay around for long, because there were too many of those normal chores stacked up or just turning into crises. Beast's nose turned out NOT to have cancer, but diskoid lupus, which is controllable. Puddin's severe peeing problem on the other hand turned out to be a bladder stone. You could see that pecan-sized thing right through the turds in the x-ray. (It was strange to see those turds again this morning, without the x-ray.) And at least these are just dogs I'm talking about and not KIDS. My Power Mac, the purchase of which has turned out to have caused immense financial difficulties, broke down totally. By that I mean IT CRASHED EVEN WHILE RUNNING THE DISK REPAIR PROGRAM FROM THE CR-ROM!! Had I not impulsively dropped my last dime on back-up the week before, I might have been upset. But the good and kind Rev. Zepel dropped by, and his Slack-filled vibes alone allowed a REPAIR to take hold the second try. These sorts of problems are SLACK, however, compared to people wanting a piece of you. Fame without fortune, the curse of those who TRY.
It's true that I totally burned the beans, but I did make an Eggplant Provincialllee that turned out great. I SENT ONE LETTER, to Nenslo to let him know I wasn't going to kill myself after all, and watched Star Trek. AT NO POINT IN THE WHOLE DAY DID I FREAK OUT.
Of course, meanwhile the email and snail mail continues to mount. It's down to only about 30 by email a day now. But that's okay. I REPENT. I QUIT MY JOB. I SLACK OFF.
You see? Everything's FINE. Really. I wouldn't hurt a FLY.
It's so liberating, to NOT TRY TO DO ANYTHING. Maybe I will achieve acheivingness without trying. Maybe suddenly my teeny stocks will SHOOT UP INSANELY and there will be a windfall just in time for Xmas just because I finally said, "FUCK THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS!! FUCK DOBBS AND HIS WALKING WOUNDED FOLLOWERS!" You see? I have hope again. Hope springs eternal. The important thing is to NOT QUIT TRYING. There wouldn't be a single operational piece of equipment in this office if I didn't tenaciously adhere to that philosophy and KEEP TRYING when something appears TOTALLY FUCKED. You can ALWAYS get ANYTHING to work, even a bitterly divided human relationship, and USUALLY ON THE SECOND TRY. But so many SubGenii fall short. So many see that gizmo or job application or critical relationship poot out after ONE TRY, and they say, "Oh what a relief, I knew it wasn't going to work anyway, now I'm free of responsibility over that aspect of my life." But here, here at SubGenius HQ, we HAUL OURSELVES UP BY THE BIG RED STRAPS and give it ONE MORE FOR THE GIPPER! Do that and by gosh, sooner or later you WILL find the answer.
Now it just so happens that in this PARTICULAR case, the answer WAS to quit trying. But see, I don't practice what I preach, because I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to... wait a minute... anyway, I DON'T CARE, you got that? I DON'T CARE what happens. PROBABLY I'll start having an INCOME again. I mean god damn it, if I cain't whup it, I'll go... DOWN. SLACK MUST COME FIRST.
That old Back-to-the-Pamphlet, Book-of-the-SubGenius-Quotin', Pulpit-Poundin', Black-Eye-Pea-Eatin, Dobbs-Approval-Requiring Rev. Ivan Stang
* This does not refer to anything or anybody ever seen on this newsgroup, or, for that matter, anything whatsoever to do with the Church, so DON'T send me a long apology letter. It's not about YOU!!
Original file name: I'm Gonna Practice What I Preac
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