eighteen beers consumed

Following his long-standing tradition of avoiding feeling feelings and self-medicating using a hard but readily available and socially acceptable drug, local aid recipient Harold K. P. Trask finished his eighteenth beer of the day. “My life is awesome,” he said, ignoring fully the sadness held tightly by a heart broken once in junior high-school, his overstrained liver struggling to deal with the gallon and a half of fermented sugar water he’d just forced down his gullet. He stretched out on the worn cushions of his second-hand couch and patted his protruding belly in apparent satisfaction.

Surveying the frayed remnants of his second failed marriage by glancing briefly at a couple of framed photographs perched on a nearby shelving unit, he tried to decide between between ordering a pizza or frying up the rest of a refrigerated flank-steak that had gone gray a week earlier. “Better safe than sorry,” he said, punching his choices into a pizza ordering application loaded onto his mobile phone.

Standing up a half hour later to grab the slab of cheesy baked dough from the delivery person, he felt terribly dizzy, a state he attributed to moving too quickly caused in reality by severe malnutrition, acute vitamin deficiency, and decades of self-neglect. Craving protein to balance out the avalanche of carbohydrates he’d consumed in the previous period of wakefulness, Harold’s body compelled him to retrieve the flank-steak from the back of the fridge and fry it up with some butter. His second and third chakras suffocating behind overstrained intestines, their information lost in the static of chronic indigestion, he settled back into the couch, and smiled weakly.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

“That’s right,” says drunk woman

Burlington, VT - In an apparent attempt to keep herself involved in recent conversations with the family of her son’s wife, Geraldine A. Carey, 62, feigned interest by saying, repeatedly, “That’s right.” Everyone in earshot, from her children to her grandchildren, could tell that the elderly matron had no fucking clue what anyone was talking about and was just waiting for an excuse to pour herself another three fingers of ice-cold vodka.

As the family reunion progressed and the alcohol content of her blood increased, Geraldine said “That’s right” in response to people making well-thought-out and educated statements about the fragile state of Internet security, the ongoing war in Syria, the possibility of liquid oceans on Jupiter’s moon Europa, as well as the likelihood that her second-eldest daughter is gay. Few persons present dwelled consciously upon the woman’s repeated use of the aforementioned phrase, preferring rather to ignore her rantings.

At one point toward the end of the day, the youngest brother of the son’s wife, a fellow named Steve, brought up the topic to his sister while the latter stood wiping down wine glasses. Refusing to look at him, she shook her head and tried not to cry. Much to the relief of children and grandchildren everywhere, a recent unofficial poll conducted by the Blomkwist Center for Family Research shows that 85% of alcoholic American grandmothers are starting to prefer “Uh huh” and “Oh really” to “That’s right.”

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥