Hedonism's Hangover

hedon·ism 

[heed-n-iz-uhm] noun

1.the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good.

2.devotion to pleasure as a way of life: The later Roman emperors were notorious for their hedonism.

The DJ spins some rousing instrumental with heavy drums while announcing the party's over.  Oh, and be sure to come back for all the exciting thrills later in the month.

Suddenly, the music stops and the house lights come up.  The glare is jolting and what looked so hip in the semi-dark is revealed to be just bare walls with black foam sprayed on them.  The air is blue with smoke and reeks of stale beer.

The cute Euro-trash waitress that was all smiles and bubbles just a short time ago, is now hovering near your table, looking haggard and unhappy.  The smiles and bubbles are gone and she is projecting the distinct impression that you are an interloper now.

A couple of tables back, a large, mean-looking Asian guy named China is flexing his muscles and not looking at all pleased to see you.

You down the dregs of your last beer and stumble out into the breaking dawn.  Somehow, all the magic of the preceding night has vanished, and now it all looks so real and harsh.  Your clothes have the stench of stale cigarettes and spilt beer, and your dance sweat is quickly turning into day-old gym locker.

Later that day, you pry your eyes open.  Everything is out of focus and at first you're not sure where you are.  The base of your skull feels like a massive iron clamp has locked on and won't release your mind.  Slowly and painfully you replay the events of the night before. 

You met up with your buds after work for happy hour.  You met this cute chick there and you decided to take her to the latest and greatest thump-o-rama, where the beer started going down easier and faster with each passing glass.

The cute chick you brought wouldn't put the damn BB down all night, so at some point you ditched her for another model that looked ready to play.  But, after soaking you for several rounds of drinks, she introduced her boyfriend and they left unceremoniously.  A worthless night, and now...

You turn your head to look at the clock only to feel the dagger of reality stabbing you just below the occipital plate and slightly above C1.  As your eyes slowly relearn how to focus, you see that it's already 3pm, but you're still not sure what day.

The pounding in your head leads to one thought...hair of the dog.  You haul your still-dressed and disheveled carcass out of the bed and plod uncertainly to the kitchen.  You pull open the refrigerator door.

On the top shelf is a month-old science experiment unfit for even a junk-yard dog.  There's a half-drunk bottle of mineral water and a brown goo on the bottom shelf that looks as if it may spawn a new life-form at any moment.

Nothing helpful.

You check your pockets, but only find a couple of coins, some lint and (thankfully) your car keys, if you can only remember where you parked it.  Opening your wallet, you spy the last credit card receipt that has the word "DENIED" in large block letters.  You're maxed out.  So THAT'S where your cash went.  And the ATM laughed at you last night.

Massaging your neck hoping for even the slightest relief, you shuffle into the living room and start tearing the couch apart, looking for any spare change.  With the coins in your pocket, you add up $1.83...enough for a beer.

Like Dracula, you emerge into the blazing sunlight of Reality and as your eyes adjust, you notice your car is not in its usual spot.  Great.  You stumble to the Stop n Squat and spend your last dime on a jug of Schiltz Bull, and barely survive the stumble home.  At the front door, you see an envelope wedged between the knob and the jamb, which you take mindlessly as you fall over the threshold.

About halfway through the bottle of Bull, you remember the envelope.  Opening it, you find a NOTICE OF REPOSSESSION.  Crap!  So that's where the car went.  Feeling a bit of anger and indignation rising in your gut (or is that the Bull coming back for a rerun?), you take your BB in hand and tap in the number on the NOTICE.  Nothing...

You forgot to pay the service.

Soon after, the meter reader comes around the side of the house in his nifty orange shirt with his ID happily flapping in the breeze.  But, instead of checking the meter, he takes it, leaving you in the sweltering darkness of your once-proud cave.  You muster a few obscenities to hurl at him, but the pounding in your head won't allow you to do much else.

Defeated, you slunk back onto the couch and reach for the remote mindlessly hoping the game will distract you, but the giant plasma TeeVee only stares back accusingly.  It suddenly occurs to you that the reason you joined your buds at happy hour was to commiserate about your company shutting down.  You make a mental note to get online Monday and sign up for unemploy...oh, yeah.  No internet.

You swill the last of your Bull as the searing pain in the back of your skull slowly starts to ease off a bit.  The fog is lifting just slightly, and the full weight of the situation is settling in behind it.  There used to always be a backup.  There was always a fall-back position.  But, as you scan the proverbial horizon, you see only columns of smoke where the bridges used to be.

You were the best and the brightest!  Even while you had a job, there were always new offers rolling in.  It occurs to you that you haven't seen one in a while.  Some guy named Raneesh is now doing your job and your were paid a nice bonus to train him via long-distance.  You figured, "What the hell?  There's always more where the last one came from."

By golly!  On Monday you're going down to the free terminals at the library...oh yeah, they shut the library last year as a cost-cutting move.  You didn't complain because you had everything you needed at home, what with Netflix and Wikipedia and TripPlanner.

You stare at the plasma TeeVee, the XBox, the BluRay.  All useless.  The rising anger causes your head to pound again and you slam your fist down on the couch.  One leg collapses, leaving you precariously perched lurching forward.  Very uncomfortable.

You could have a garage sale, but all your neighbors have been out of work longer than you, and they all have useless gee-gaws, too.

You feel this blackness crawling up your spine.  You know it, though you haven't felt it in years.  You once called it 'despair'.  You fight it back, but the weapons of 'hope' and 'change' have long since given up and looked for greener pastures overseas.

You think about all those 'alternative' websites you used to laugh about with your buds down at the watering hole.  The ones who were always going on about home gardening and buying gold and being prepared.  Those crazy fringers who were always hollering about your profligate lifestyle and your wasteful ways.  You remember that old adage your mother (who grew up in the First Depression) always said, "Waste not, want not."

As your stomach begins to stir and demand attention, you are suddenly accosted with visions of all the half-eaten Happy Meals you shoved in the trash can.  Your mouth waters uncontrollably as you remember all those steak dinners you meant to finish, but were tossed after they became poster images for fungus-lovers.  Oh, if you just had one of those huge meals you didn't finish.

You look around at your McMansion.  You've already got two mortgages on it.  If you're lucky, you've got maybe a month or two left to enjoy it, though it looks more and more like a prison than a home.  All the pills, the blow and the parties that have passed under your roof.  If you just had an eight-ball's worth of that cash in your pocket, you might be able to do something now...like eat.

"This is all YOUR fault," you bellow into the blackness, and it echoes accusingly back at you from somewhere upstairs.  You fling a cushion at the emptiness, but it only recalls the emptiness in your belly and the screaming demons in your brain from last night's Last Big Hurrah.

Like a warped mantra from a Buddhist nightmare, your mind keeps saying, "If I had just..."  Pulling your hair doesn't stop it.

From somewhere deep in the roots of your brain comes a Vision.  You'll go back to your roots!  You'll run off to the wilds of Wyoming and live off the land!  You'll build yourself a shack and hunt for meat, like the Man you are!  You'll dip your water out of mountain streams and let your beard grow and eat wild berries and...

Then Reason slaps you upside the head.  You don't have the first clue how to live like a real Man.  The closest you've ever come was camping in national parks with coolers full of steaks and beer and 27 of your closest friends, under the watchful eyes of the Park Rangers.  You don't even own a gun, because guns were evil and the cause of all pain.  Besides, you've never even been hunting, and you sure as hell couldn't tell an edible berry from a poisonous one.  Though the poisonous ones are sounding rather attractive at the moment.

Your dad tried to teach you all that stuff, but you could hardly pull yourself away from the Commodor 64 and Pong.

Now, you sit there.  The hangover has a death-grip on your brain stem.  You couch is trying to dump you on the floor.  The refrigerator   The pantry is empty and the refrigerator is frightening.  Your wheels are gone.  The electricity is cut off.  And you live in suburban hell where the nearest anything is an hour's walk or more.  And public transportation?  Oh, they cancelled that project last year for lack of funds.

Outside is deathly silence.  It's Saturday afternoon, but there's no lawnmowers or kids playing or dogs barking.  Just the wind in the drought-stricken trees.

All that's left is a bar of Xanax from your psycho-therapy after the old lady left with your bank account.  That should carry you into tomorrow, at least.  You can deal with reality then...

You down the bar and slam the medicine cabinet shut.  Then, looking in the mirror, you say angrily and out loud, "Bastards!  Someone's going to pay for this!"

Repo Men

"A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations." - Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), Repo Man

The following story is alleged.  No one has been tried or found guilty yet...yet.  Charges are pending and Jakarta police say they are taking the investigation "seriously."

I feel much more relieved now.  Especially since the perps, if they are found guilty, could get as much as FIVE YEARS in jail!  Whew!  And I thought this was a serious crime.  Glad to know different.  Read on...

The next time a debt collector rings you up at work (assuming you still have one of the three left in North America), just remember what's coming, and you'll feel better.  I promise.

So, anyway, this guy walks into CitiBank in Jakarta.  Seems his credit card bill, which he thought should be around $4,000, was up around $10,000.  He had a problem with that.  After all, if $6,000 magically appeared on my CC statement, I'd be moderately upset, as well.

This guy meets with a bank representative.  Word of mouth has it that it was a buxom young thing who's had multiple surgical 'enhancements.'  She proceeded to listen to this guy's story.  She was so moved by the tale of woe that she called over three debt collectors, who are contracted by the bank (CitiBank, and American institution, by the way) for the purposes of encouraging debt repayment.

Before I go on, you should know that debt collecting in Indonesia is somewhat more...physical than in other parts of the world.  No pussyfooting around here.  These guys go straight to the problem and right the wrongs.  No sense in being nice, just in case there might be a mistake in the debt process, you see.

I'm aware of this one hypothetical situation where a business associate of someone I may or may not know, absconded with about $500,000, which was a down-payment on a deal of some sort or another.  Well, the Indonesian legal system being what it is alleged to be, this acquaintance decided to circumvent the police and courts, which could take years to process a complaint like this (with no guarantees, of course).  Instead, this person gives a photo and all known details about the associate to a friend, who may or may not be a high ranking military type.

This supposed high-ranking type turns bloodhound, and tracks the fellow down.  Unable to politely recover the goods (we assume), the dogs are slipped and proceed to pummel the fellow until the money is recovered. We are given to assume that the fellow found the Lord and will never do such a thing again.  The End.

Good thing its only a fairy tale, right?

So, anyway, this buxom young thing sees that the guy is not going to fork over the dough without some investigation into the charges.  Oh My!  That'll take time and effort.  Can't have that.  After all, while we wait, the interest is racking up and he might complain about that, too!

She calls the debt collectors over, whose names are the South Pacific version of Guido, Bugsy and Knuckles.  They take the guy up to the 5th floor for a review of his credit history.  In the process of reviewing said history, there is a lot of table-banging and raised voices.

Later, around lunch time, one of the staff walks into the room to check on things.  The debt collectors have taken a break, presumably.  She sees the guy lying on the floor, huddled in a ball, with foam coming out of his mouth.  This is usually indicative of a punctured lung, which can happen when investigating debts in Indonesia. Easpecially at American banking institutions.  Very emotional, these things are.

The staff member immediately notifies Guido, who displays grave concern by laughing.  He goes into the room, takes the guy's cell phone and calls (we presume) a random contact.  Guido tells the contact to come fetch the guy and take him to the hospital.

Well, not wanting to waste time, the contact calls for an ambulance, which given Jakarta traffic, probably takes an hour to go one mile to get there.  Upon retrieving the guy, we can imagine that it takes two hours to get back to the hospital, since it's later in the day and traffic is even worse now.

The guy dies en route, so the story goes.

Later on, the police are called, who come to the scene of the investigation and start poking around.  Well, as you can imagine, the emotional stress of having one's credit history being examined left blood stains on the walls, drapes and floor.  Apparently, the office staff was not very thorough when cleaning up after the investigation.

Thus, a police investigation ensues.  Photos on the front page of the paper have detectives displaying window covers allegedly stained with blood from the guy (victim seems so harsh in this instance).  We are assured by Jakarta police that a complete investigation will uncover the facts, and if Guido and the boys were acting on orders from superiors, heads will roll.

However, this being Indonesia and the institution being a Very Large Bank, we can assume that sufficient amounts of re-direction will be applied in all the right places.  We can assume that all the blood was from a ritual sacrifice and had nothing to do with beating the poor guy.  We can also assume that the debt (remember this was about a credit card balance?) will devolve onto family members, who in due course will be approached by debt collectors to review the facts of the case.  We can only think that all the charges are valid and that someone didn't run off with the number and start buying stuff on-line.

One must stand in awe of stories like this.  After all, it makes perfect sense that if you want ot collect a debt, you simply pummel the guy to death so that he can't possibly repay it, right?

We can all relax, though, knowing this is only an alleged event, and that a full investigation is still pending.  After all, WE have all read the micro-print on our credit card agreements, right?  WE know that all disputes will be handled by the Guido, Bugsy and Knuckles department, don't we?  WE can all rest assured that CitiBank doesn't operate this way in the NORMAL course of business.

Thank God the banksters reformed the bankruptcy laws in good, ol' US of A.  WE all read the fine print in the law, didn't we?  WE know that they would never behave like that in a civilized country like Merica!  So WE don't need to have any concern about carrying cards with the word "CITI" on it.

And WE know why the word "banksters" was coined.

Why is it that these bedtime stories are always so gruesome? Like cradles rocking and falling out of trees, baby and all.  Or red riding hoods being a marked target for wolves?  Sure, they're supposed to be cautionary, but do they have to be so graphic?

I, for one, am relieved that these things never happen in real life.

Next time, we'll talk about the recent alleged events in Medan, where a gang of youths packing serious firepower (in a country where guns are banned) gathered around the car of a family as they arrived home from work, and proceeded to riddle the car with bullets, killing mom and dad instantly.  Their crime?  Being of Chinese decent.

Ah, more bedtime tales for the aware child.  And people wonder why Texans love packing heat.

Oly: You want some help with that beer, kid? 
Otto: You're all repo men. 
Oly: What if we are? 
[Otto pours his entire beer on the floor] 
Bud: [standing up] You know, kid, uh, usually when someone pulls shit like that, my first reaction is, I wanna punch his fuckin' lights out. But you know something? 
Bud and Oly: YOU'RE ALL RIGHT.

- Repo Man (1984)