Farewell My Concubines

Well, I've officially drank enough eggnog to kill a goat, resulting last night in a terrifying vision of Christmas Future. Either that or I was at a U2 concert. Any way you slice it, I'm running out after work to buy the biggest chicken I can find and give it to some Cuban refugee children to use as a boat, or something.

It's clear as fish's piss that the time has come for Stu Umbrage to change his ways, I've been wind sprinting down the wrong path for far too long. I don't know if it's going to entail doing some charity work, or maybe just dating a girl named Charity, frankly if that second option counts I'm tending to lean that way. Not that I've got any problem with wiping barf off the chins of little alcoholic kids or whatever you're supposed to do to get in good with the lord or other assorted deities these days. But if I can earn some equivalency points by hot-tubbing with some aerobics instructor who had hippie parents, well, sorry little lushes. I don't know if I could live with myself if I took the "high road" on that one. Also known as "Sucker Street".

Whatever it is, I've got to do something quick, though. The last thing I want is to wake up one morning with one of those gigantic Mardi Gras heads. Don't ask, it was a dream I had. At first I was wanting to write it off as some bad clams ate after dark, like "That shit doesn't happen," but then I started to think about it, and what if it does? What if some poor sucker has the dream, ignores it and then wakes up with his gourd taking up the whole bed? There could be hundreds of guys like that out there, you'd never know because it's not like they'd ever leave the house looking like that. Christ, you'd get laughed out of the hat store. Nobody needs that.

It's not like I've been a terrible guy, but I won't argue that my life hasn't been misspent thus far. Hell, my pocket money is misspent, why should my life be any different? I still have craploads of Furbies left over from when those things were popular. I'm not kidding, I have a whole closet full of them. You open the door and it sounds like end of the world. My neighbors called the cops once because they thought I was smuggling illegal immigrants into the country, but then the cops wouldn't come in because they were afraid my apartment was possessed by Satan. I tried to explain, but it's hard to present a lucid narrative when you're constantly being interrupted by "Oooooh! Dark! Brrrrrum-ruum-ruum!"

Those little Mogwai fuckers have cost me more than one girlfriend, believe me.

For that reason and a laundry-list of others, it's time to make some changes. Not quite head-shaving, pimp-shooting changes, but serious nonetheless. First, it's time to admit that my five-year plan to become Bjork has been a dismal failure. I blame neither myself nor the lack of support from Bjork's family, it's clear this whole thing was just not meant to happen. It's time to move on.

Second, it's becoming painfully, ass-numbingly obvious that the move to New York was a mistake. For some reason I thought it would be the land of milk and honey, I'm not sure what I was thinking. It should have been obvious, Wisconsin is where milk comes from. I don't know about honey. But New York is the land of shit and money, which is close but not the same thing. Between the commune's base pay of "good friends, good times and some magic beans" and the rising price of pay toilets in the city, something's going to go Chernobyl in the near future.

Which is why it's high time for Stu Umbrage to get back to his roots. No, not Wisconsin. Jesus. Those roots can stay there. I'm thinking more the open road, the wind in my hair, and the desert stretching out before me. I'm thinking cheap rent and an alcoholic workforce that puts me at the top of headhunting lists just for showing up. I'm thinking New Mexico. I'm in the mood for a place where you can buy Peyote at the supermarket. That's the kind of state where a man can get some soul-searching done, and crap for free. Sign me up.

So, although I've had a good run here at the commune in the last ten months, I think it's time to ramble on. Don't tell Bagel though, I plan on leaving a mannequin in my chair and am paying Rok Finger to turn in one column from my backlog every couple weeks just in case nobody notices I'm gone and they keep paying me. After all, beans can come in handy on a road trip, and all it'll cost me is a couple bottles of Old Spice. I told Finger they stopped making the stuff but that I had the last few bottles stashed away, I'm not sure if he believed me but he didn't want to risk it.

Wish me luck, commune readers. If and when I get to a state of Zen I'll send you a postcard, though I warn you now that it'll probably have no words and just a pear on it or something. You know how that Zen shit is.

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