Suicide

If I were to commit suicide, and I can’t stress enough to you that I have no plans to commit suicide, if I were planning to actually commit suicide this would not in any way be a funny story, and I absolutely do understand that and want to take this moment to assure you, you will not hear about my suicide next week and think “Oh! I was just reading a piece on his blog about a suicide, and I laughed and laughed and laughed, oh my, but I’m a monster!” this will not happen and you do not have to worry about it, because I absolutely do promise not to commit suicide upon this night.

Although I don’t promise never to commit suicide. Options are always on the table after all, and while things are going okay with me right now I do have a history of both depression and crippling panic attacks that, while currently relatively mild and manageable, have been MUCH worse in my past and could for all I know overwhelm me in the future. There’s every chance that, when the end of my life comes, my cause of death does wind up being myself. It’s a possibility I’ve considered, and that I’m aware of, and that in some weird, small way, I’ve even managed to make my peace with.

But not today. And when it comes to suicidal depression, “Not today” really is the most empowering thing a person can say to himself, from a certain point of view.

So no, I have no plans to kill myself.

That said; IF I were to commit suicide, I do have a plan as to how I’d do it.

I’d get some cash together, probably via credit cards that I would never have to pay back, and count on the fact that the internet exists and that, in all likelihood, it wouldn’t be too hard to find a contract killer.

I’m pretty smart, after all, how hard could a contract killer be to find?

Once I found my killer, I’d stipulate the manner of my death in very specific language, and make it clear that unless my cause of death was to my liking my murderer would not get paid.

Because, in addition to a profound self-loathing, my character includes an equally profound narcissism, and I have an unhealthy need to be the center of attention at all times, as evidenced by the fact that here I am, discussing my own possible suicide in spite of the fact that I have no plans to commit such an act against myself any time soon.

So yes, I’d want my death to have maximum impact and, as I’d be paying a man to cause my death, I fortunately would have the opportunity to assure it was maximally impactful.

This is why if I were to commit suicide the method I would choose would be “Via Sniper.”

I’d be sure I didn’t know WHEN it was coming, only that it was, and how. This would cause me to seem suddenly unexplainably nervous and distracted whilst dealing with the people around me, perhaps leading them to wonder what I had going on that I wasn’t talking about.

If asked, I’d be evasive, claiming it was nothing, but not convincingly enough that anyone would believe me, just enough so that they’d let the matter drop, hoping I might bring it up on my own time at some future date.

Not knowing that no such future date, for me, would exist.

And when the time finally came, and my own sniper’s bullet ripped through my body, sharply, suddenly, killing me before I even hit the ground, before I was even aware of the people surrounding me, suddenly screaming in terror and scampering for cover, when the moment came I’d die knowing that, at the very least, I’d given the people in my world one last, surreal story to tell to one another at my wake.

“What the fuck was Munroe involved in, that they’d send a sniper after him?” My friends would ask, but they’d never know the answer because, of course, there wouldn’t be one. I wouldn’t be involved in much of anything, other than the hiring of a sniper off the internet.

And in that way my death would provide a little bit of mystery and magic to the world…

Now: Some of you might wonder if I would truly want my last act in this world to be a horrific act of violence against myself, for no reason other than to fuck with my friends one last time before I shuffled off this mortal coil.

And to those of you I say: Have you MET me?

Disposing of my Remains

I’ve heard stories about funerals during which the deceased, as dictated by their living wills, distribute jewelry to their mourners, little glass jars on little silver chains, each jar containing a portion of the ashes that are their earthly remains.

After cremation, the notion goes, rather than having your ashes blown out to sea the option exists to send each and every one of those who’ve come to see you laid to rest home with a portion, that they might have some part of you, some real, tangible thing, to remember you by.

And I do admit, I find myself impressed by the notion.

It strikes me as the perfect sort of weird, passive aggressive power play to make, and one that you will never, ever be called to account on, because who would be crass enough to speak ill of a dead man at his own funeral?

You would know why I had done it, but there would be nothing you could do about the matter without seeming like the worst sort of person in front of everyone who’d ever cared about me. So you’d smile, and accept the little glass jar on its little silver chain, and pretend that it held some kind of meaning for you.

And, from beyond the grave, if anything beyond the grave does exist, I’d laugh.

“Here,” I would tell you, “have something you do not want, but can never, ever, for as long as you might live, throw away.”

And you would have to grin and take it, knowing as you did that I had, one last time, gotten the better of you with the sort of weird, petty, childish prank that you’d so long put up with during my life.

And perhaps this reminder of who I had been, and what it had been that drew you to me during my life might make you, for one brief moment in the middle of my funeral, smile.

Or perhaps it would not.

Either way, you’d be stuck with the jewelry.

Gotcha!

...on headwear.

I’ve recently started a monthly, curated subscription box service, because literally everyone else on earth seems to be doing that right now, and I figured “Me too!”

Projects have begun for worse reasons, don’t judge.

My service, FedoraBox, will send a monthly selection of three to four artisanal, handmade Fedora and Trilby hats, tailored to fit the recipient, such that the subscriber’s head might never go unadorned. Every month, a new box of hats will arrive, in various patterns, colors, some in plaids or paisleys, some with patterns of flames along their brim, what have you, for as long as the subscription is maintained.

And, naturally, the recipient of these hats will have no say as to how long the subscription is maintained.

FedoraBox, you see, is not a service that you can purchase for yourself. It is only available as a gift, for you to buy for the worst douchebag you know.

Is someone in your social circle a devoted men’s right’s advocate, with all the devotion to “Ethics in video game journalism” that that entails? Or a little too quick to point out in a discussion about police brutality that, actually, ALL lives matter? Why not subscribe them to FedoraBox, so that everyone who sees them might, at a glance, know exactly what they’re all about?

Rightly or wrongly, fedora and trilby hats have taken on a very specific meaning in 2015, and while this may or may not be fair, FedoraBox is more than happy to use this prevalent attitude about the wearers of said hats to help you irritate the sort of person you believe deserves to watch in increasing frustration as every square inch of his home gradually fills up with unrequested douche-caps…

And, and this is the FedoraBox promise: We will never stop sending the person you subscribe hats. No amount of threats, begging, pleading or weeping with our customer service department will stop the seemingly unending flow of hats to the doorstep of the person you’ve chosen this gift for, until such time as you and you alone decide to stop paying for the service.

Ending this process is, ultimately, entirely up to you.

FedoraBox will cost you $40/month, accepts all major credit cards, and guarantees a minimum $70 value, if you only count the value of the hats themselves. The value of psychologically torturing someone over the course of several months, naturally, is a deeply personal matter, and we’ll leave calculating it to you.

So sign up today! Find a douchebag in your life, sign him up, and watch in mean-spirited glee as the fedoras start flowing! Because life is very short, and even the best people deserve a little mean-spirited glee now and again!

FedoraBox. Because some people just deserve it…

Kanye West

Kanye West once famously claimed to be a god, but has anybody ever actually worshipped him? Like, full on, Sunday services, preaching the gospel of Versace, Jesus Walks-style worship?

If not, Could we?

I mean, I don’t understand the precise mechanism that was used, but I do know that in Australia an online campaign and some census-based shenanigans led to “Jedi” becoming a recognized, relatively popular faith down under. I can’t imagine it’d be that much more difficult here. It’d take more people, to be sure, but there are a lot more people from whom to find interested potential converts, and at the end of the day who WOULDN’T want to worship Kanye West?

He already has confirmed miracles on the record, after all. For example, the continued existence of his career after half the things he’s said on television. Or Diamonds From Sierra Leone, that tune was killer...

I am not being arch there, Diamonds From Sierra Leone was a hot track. Get the version with the Jay-Z verse, you’ll see what I mean. For his faults as a human, Kanye knows his way around a tune.

With this, plus the sizable name recognition the man commands, in mind, it seems a cinch that five to ten percent of a given country, atheists and agnostics mainly but still, could be persuaded by a sufficiently amusing online campaign to participate in some similar manner of census-based shenanigans, should the law in Canada, or for that matter the States, prove to be similar to that of Australia and census-based shenanigans be all that was required.

I’m not sure we could get people to “Do” anything for this, but I bet we could convince them to check the “Other” box for religion and write in “Kanye-ism” if doing so would create a new religion to add to the pantheon of the West.

Pardon the pun.

And, if we can do this, shouldn’t we? Some would say no, indeed some would say that being able to do something is among the worst reasons to actually do that thing, but to those I say: Whom would it hurt, to check a box and write in a word? Nobody I can see, and it would provide an amusing little trifle with which to pass the time…

And Kanye would appreciate, I think, finally receiving the worship he appears to believe he deserves…

It would be fun.

And, when entering into the Church of Yeezy West, the Latter-day Saint, we would always remember: Bring the man his damn croissant.

Halloween

I have a friendly, easygoing demeanor, and because of this fact people tend to instinctively trust me.

A shame, since I’m a horrible person.

Not that that’s your neighbor’s problem.

Your neighbor has no part in my plan, after all, beyond loaning me your extra key so I could check your mail. I returned it two hours later, and she never even realized I’d run to Home Depot and had a copy cut.

Why would she suspect anything along those lines, after all? I’m so pleasant and charming. And anyway, I did it months ago, by now she’s completely forgotten it ever happened.

But I haven’t forgotten. Not least due to your key on my key ring, waiting for the right time to be used.

The time when, as you sleep, I use your key to sneak into your home and creep up on you in your bed, so silent that you never once stir, that you never once suspect someone else might be in the room.

You look so peaceful when you sleep.

And when you wake up and check your cellular phone, you’ll find you’ve received a text reading “Happy Halloween,” that was sent from that same cellular phone during the night.

Just keeping things nice and festive.

Keeping you in a heightened state of paranoid terror.

Because it’s the reason for the season.

Happy Halloween.

...on teaching English.

I’m teaching a friend of mine English.

It’s easy to do, conveniently, because he speaks English nearly fluently already.

It isn’t his first language, granted, and there are certainly gaps, but he speaks it well enough to get his point across with zero confusion, I’ve never once had to ask him what he meant while we was speaking, and the number of times he’s had to ask me to slow down can be counted on my fingers.

Which is impressive. I talk fast and use a lot of slang, I can only imagine what a nightmare I’d be to someone for whom English was a second language.

It’s the slang, in fact, that I’ve been tasked with teaching him. The idioms, the colloquialisms, the cute little turns of phrases and clichés and expressions that a culture accrues to itself over time, that outsiders to that culture, looking in, don’t have the context or perspective necessary to understand.

He feels that as a writer I know about such things.

He’s probably right.

So whenever he hears a word or phrase he doesn’t understand, he writes it down and brings it to me, so I can explain it to him.

And, to the best of my ability, I do.

I try to, at any rate.

Some phrases are hard to explain, some hinge on a shared bit of collective history or reference to pop culture, but I do what I can to make the meaning of each tidbit as clear as is meaningfully possible.

A task made even harder by the fact that I know I could tell him literally anything, just to fuck with him, and he’d believe me without question and add it to his personal lexicon.

And that would be hilarious, to me.

Because I am a bad person.

Still…

I like the dude.

I’m trying to be good.

Valentine's Day

When she saw the ring, there at the bottom of her drink, her eyes went wide. As you’d expect them to.

It had been the perfect romantic meal, topped by a grand romantic gesture, and for a moment she couldn’t believe it. couldn’t believe it was happening to her. Her mouth worked silently as she tried to put together what she was seeing, tried to force words out against their will, to respond to what was laying there, before her, at the bottom of the glass, but it was all too much to process.

I thought she was going to cry, maybe she thought that too, for a few seconds, but she blinked back the tears, shook her head, and looked up into the eyes of the man she loved.

“Yes.” She finally whispered, “Oh God yes. Of course I will!”

And that’s when his eyes went wide.

And as he started sputtering and stammering that none of this had anything to do with him, and the perfect romantic moment they’d shared began its descent into the fight that would surely threaten the very foundation of their relationship, I watched from the nearby side stand, doing my best not to giggle.

The fake engagement ring wasn’t even that expensive.

It was totally worth what I’d paid.

Being a waiter isn’t the most rewarding job a man can have, indeed there are days when I think it might break me, body and spirit.

Still, Valentine’s Day makes it all worthwhile…

Weekly Prompt Story: The Card Trick

http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2012/09/02/weekly-challenge-332-card/

The Card Trick

By Christopher Munroe

Pick a card, any card.

Look, then put it back into the deck.

Queen of Diamonds, right?

No?

Well, the trick only works one time in fifty-two.

Still…

When I did it to my buddy Steve, and it was the Queen of Diamonds, he basically lost his mind. Spent days trying to figure out how I did it. Eventually stopped asking me, but I suspect some part of him still wonders, even today.

And if you don’t think that was worth the dozens of times the trick failed, you don’t understand my willingness to over-commit to a bit at all.

No Such Thing as Zombies

The walking corpse outside your door isn’t a zombie.

There’s no such thing as zombies.

It’s simply a corpse I’ve rigged with remote-controlled animatronics, and which I control the movements of from the safety and comfort of my nearby van.

I’m watching you now, through miniature cameras behind it’s eyes.

But, in spite of there being no such thing as zombies, it is a walking corpse. And that’s all you’ll see.

That’s what makes this so great!

This may, I admit, be crossing a line.

It may end our friendship.

Yet, here in my van, I’m laughing my head off.

A Man to be Trifled With

“I’m not a man to be trifled with!” I howled.

Jenkins bowed his head and returned to his cubicle. I smiled, satisfied I’d showed him who’s boss, and returned to my office.

Upon my return I saw it. My desk, chair, everything was affixed to the ceiling. My computer, upside-down, sat bolted to the desk. They’d even stripped the carpet and reassemble it piecemeal upon the ceiling. I’d no idea how many people it’d taken, but it happened while I’d been screaming at Jenkins.

It was then I realized.

I am, it would seem, a man to be trifled with.