That I have bothered typing you a formal salutation is a wasp sting that will likely prevail on my skin until they've slid me into the crematory furnace, where kindly flames will finally sterilize me of any damning evidence that we shared Earth's gases. The simple act of writing this piece is akin to panting and trembling violently on a hospital bed in the total agony of birthing a 15 lb hate baby. You'd better take that job at the tyre factory, because the hate baby is yours.
The only possible way I could hate you even more than presently is if I cloned myself, in effect multiplying my hatred by two. Even then, I feel sick at the thought of bringing a blameless clone into this world only for it to share the titanic burden of my loathing. As far as I would travel through the known cosmos just to satisfy the bitterness that drives me, the image of mercy killing my own clone just to rid him of our shared memories is a feat that even I would find excessive. At least I might find solace in that each slap and pelt of my hurl upon my clone's skull would be a soothing verse in a lullaby that would deliver him from your repulsive impression.
I fucking hate you so much that I plan in advance. I have spent months in a damp, windowless dwelling, eating canned avocados and just weaving an intricate web of coordinated events that may lead to my final revenge. I wear on my right hand a boxing glove filled with coconut oil in the hopes that one day my touch will be irresistible to your future bride. I want to take away that which you love the most, my nemesis, and coconut oil is how I'll do it.
I will make scorching, white-hot love to whomever it is you have formed a close bond with, and I will come not from pleasures of the skin, but of the thought that I have shared council with the one person who promised faithfulness to you. By god, my hate for you is so strong that it requires the facade of love to be truly exemplified.
Wake up, old chap, it's breakfast time. Can you smell the meal I've been slaving over in the kitchen? What do your nostrils detect here, because to me, it carries the very distinct waft of your children's shoes. Oh yes, that's right, I've been flipping the remains of your offspring in a wok layered with vegetable oil all morning and I've been doing this because my hatred is multi-generational. I'm a very sick person, but not as sick as you'll feel once you realize that you're digesting your own kids.
In a way, I have you to thank for getting me through my day-to-day, for though your existence is arsenic, it is the thought of even your most momentary sufferings that gives me the strength to rise from bed. The problem, it seems, contains the seeds of solution, and for that I am thankful. The knowledge that you are capable of agony is like emerald waters to the eyes of a shriveled desert wanderer.
I hate you, and every day I dream of pulling off your stupid fucking mustache and feeding it back to you like a piece of hairy shrimp.
My first exposure to the world of pro-wrestling was, like many others, one of the most hideously confusing moments of my young life. You see, watching pro-wrestling at any point in your life is like walking in on a weird conversation with absolutely no context whatsoever, and being too afraid or even engrossed to try and slow it down to make sense of it. pro-wrestling is the strangest and most grueling form of theatre there is, like boxing on acid. It's a larger-than-life cartoon spewed into reality by a maniacal, hedonistic billionaire man-child. I know all of this now, but at seven years old I had no idea. I was sitting on my couch, completely fascinated by how this long-haired guy was being booed so violently by thousands of people, and wondering why he looked like he was enjoying it so much.
Today is the 29th of March, 2015, and every year around this time, millions and millions of people sit on their couches in a state of either unbridled excitement or confusion. Tonight is the 31st annual Wrestlemania event being held at the Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. Every year since its inception, Wrestlemania has been akin to the Superbowl of wrestling, though it's more likely much bigger than that. People from every known corner of the planet tune in on televisions and laptops to watch a host of insane and characterful men and women beat the shit out of each other on the biggest theatre stage ever erected. Pro-wrestling is, when you really think about it, the most debaucherous creation of late capitalism in the sense that a huge slice of the world shuts down and throws all of their money at one company so they can witness an undead mortician do battle with a masked psychotic inside of a 16 ft steel cage. Everything about it is insane and none of it should be popular, but it is, it's really fucking popular. It is both the worst and best thing on television at the same time.
So, one half of the world is going to be slamming back cans and "marking out" like there's no tomorrow, while the other half will be furrowing their brows, extending their bottoms lips, and wondering why police haven't been called to help the guy being attacked with cinder blocks. That's the thing about pro-wrestling, you have to give yourself to it, you've got to shut off the part of your brain that produces logic babies and just go with the flow.
For those of you who cannot shut out the voices telling you that none of this makes sense, but would like to try and enjoy the show tonight as best you can, I'd like to give you my own little rundown on what pro-wrestling is and has been for the last few decades, starting off with a favourite of mine, The Sheik.
The Sheik
The Sheik (1924 - 2003) was probably the perfect villain in the golden age of wrestling. He was everything your typical American wrestling fan hated; mean-spirited, underhanded, and 'foreign'. He was this insane snake-worshiping billionaire from Syria who, instead of enjoying his riches at home, decided to come to the USA to stab guys like Dusty Rhodes with forks, set them on fire, and generally piss off as many Americans as he could. You have to respect that.
Hulk Hogan Slams André the Giant
The first and most important thing you need to know about André the Giant is that he was 7 ft 4, 520 lbs. The man could, and would often, drink ten times as much alcohol as any of the other muscleheads on the WWF roster. He was a freak of nature. However, Hulk Hogan was the pro-wrestling superman at this point in time, so when people said "you can't beat André the Giant", Hogan simply responded by picking him up and nearly fucking him out of the ring, because America.
The Gobbledy Gooker
At some point before Survivor Series 1990, a giant fucking egg began appearing on WWF programming. No one knew what it was, no one knew what was in it, they just knew that it was going to hatch at Survivor Series. So when a giant mutant turkey rose from the splintered eggshell and proceeded to make its way to the ring, people knew even less about what was going on than they did when the giant egg first appeared.
Robocop Saves Sting
I'm not entirely sure why Robocop was in the building that night, but when Sting was jumped and caged by the Horsemen, the cyborg avenger decided to interject and save the Stinger. I can only assume that Robocop was hired as security for the night and took an unusually intolerant attitude towards bad guy shenanigans.
Cactus Jack
Much in the same way as The Sheik was more interested in setting people on fire than offering anything in the way of athletic prowess, so too was the outlaw Cactus Jack more concerned with setting himself on fire than executing the perfect fujiwara armbar. Cactus Jack (Mankind, Dude Love, Mick Foley) was basically a toothless psychopath who, once he was fired from brand giants WCW, wandered around the world beating the shit out of himself and others in death match tournaments. He would eventually go through an number of changes during his career in WWF/E, but he remained every bit as unhinged and masochistic.
ECW
ECW was the wrestling promotion that managed to fit everything that was wrong with American society into one television show and monthly PPV. They had inbred hillbillies, alcoholics with Singapore canes, a dancing Amish, a manic depressive cult leader, gangsters, the Italian mob, and they all beat each other up with chairs, tables, barbed wire bats, and almost any sharp or blunt object you can hold with two hands. They never bothered to address the legalities of anything that went on, and in the real world, they'd all be well behind bars. Though most of the pro-wrestling world would be anyway.
Goldust
Wrestling has often been full of these really macho, greased-up muscle freaks that go around flexing and "no-homo'ing", Goldust wasn't one of them. He's a bisexual, gender-bending sociopath who literally thinks he's an Academy award bust, and his offense often included incredibly risqué moves like feeling up his opponents and grabbing their genitals. He's far more tame in his old age, but it could be a matter of time before he starts donning the wig again.
The Nation of Domination
At a time in the 90s when racial tensions were high following the Los Angeles riots, The Nation of Domination came into the WWF as one of the most balls-out, angry group of POC wrestlers that have ever been featured on the program. They were basically whitey-hating Black Panthers who wanted to take over the WWF "by any means necessary" and their promos and story lines are some of the most memorable of the era, though they'll likely never be referenced today due to the sensitive matter their story dealt with. Shame, because they had the coolest theme music as well.
The Ministry of Darkness
Led by a Southern mortician turned demonic priest, The Undertaker, The Ministry of Darkness were a motley crew of weirdos all joined under the same banner to fuck over CEO Vince McMahon and his establishment. However, just like your favourite underground metal band, they eventually sold out and joined the corporation as The Corporate Ministry. Try to imagine a bunch of goths who happen to be on a corporate payroll and you've got the idea.
Goldberg
Goldberg was this giant man-eating Jew that went around fucking terrorizing the WCW throughout the late 90s, amassing an undefeated streak of 173-0. He would literally throw people around the ring and just mess up their shit, and he was so unhinged (I still don't know why he was so angry) that he had to be escourted to the ring by police, not for his own safety, but for the safety of others.
The Undertaker
Basically speaking, The Undertaker is some kind of undead master of darkness (take from that what you will) that uses lightning bolts, smoke, caskets, and his innumerable hooded acolytes to scare his opponents into submission. While he used to wrestle regularly in WWF/E, whether it was for titles, to fight the powers that be, or to "school" people under his American Badass persona, he now shows up once a year at Wrestlemania to put the hammer down on whoever he thinks is worthy enough. He also has a love/hate relationship with his burn-victim/necrophiliac brother Kane...who is now a corporate businessman.
Perry Saturn
So, WWF/E were never very good at addressing the very real injuries that their talent go through, but they did give a kind of nod to the untold of amount of concussions sustained under their product by offering up Perry Saturn. Perry Saturn sustained very serious head trauma following a beatdown by the Acolytes Protection Agency and his former boss, Raven. From there on his behaviour became more and more erratic until he finally fell in love with a mop, who he named "Moppy", and then eventually returned to average brain capacity without any explanation offered whatsoever.
The ECW/WCW Alliance
By 2001, both ECW and WCW were defunct and owned by Vince McMahon, and as is tradition in most pro-wrestling circles, a lot of wrestlers were very pissed off about this. So, united under the rebellious son and daughter of Vince McMahon, both ECW and WCW invaded the WWF, half to take revenge for themselves, and half to do the bidding of the McMahon children who wanted revenge on their father. This "invasion" lasted a few months before all rebellion was quashed a Survivor Series 2001, when after countless defections and betrayals, Kurt Angle attacked the traitor Stone Cold in order to secure a victory for both The Rock and the WWF promotion. This needs far more context than I gave it, but people are still asking questions about this story to this day. I still don't entirely understand what the real endgame was supposed to be here.
The Spirit Squad
The Spirit Squad arrived on the scene when pro-wrestling was going through its most confusing period ever. We had a Boogeyman, two cowardly French dudes, Billy Gunn came out of the closet (only to go back in), we had a foot-fetishist that killed babies, Goldust had Tourette's, DX were back only much older, and everything was just generally upsetting. So the Spirit Squad were a gang of male cheerleaders who worked as Vince McMahon's personal guard and who delighted in bullying other stars less 'popular' than them. Eventually, the only member of the Squad to go on and do anything with their lives was Dolph Ziggler, who now enjoys singles success, though takes regular shitkickings at the hands of other stars.
Vince McMahon Fights God
The first thing you need to know about Vince McMahon is that Vince McMahon is the most megalomaniacal human being that doesn't hold dictatorship status. Vince McMahon made WWE the corporate behemoth it is today, but at the cost of his own sanity. Sometimes Vince pulled some ridiculous things from his arse that he thought might make him more money, but none of them quite as morally destitute as inviting God to the ring to fight him in front of an audience of highly religious Kentucky citizens. It was a brilliant move in retrospect, but also hyperbolic to levels unheard of.
John Cena
John Cena is basically like Hulk Hogan 2.0 in the sense that he has been, in the past, a superman character. There was a time when he never lost a match, always saved the day, send the bad guys packing, and everyone fucking hated his guts for it. He's slightly more chilled out now and has actually been portrayed as something close to human in recent years, though is still hated worldwide. Which is strange, considering the man has the hardest job in entertainment. Four nights a week of wrestling in front of huge audiences interrupted only so he can meet dying children whose last request it was to meet him. That's heavy. I'm a bit sad now.
The Wyatt Family
Even after two years, I still have no idea why The Wyatt Family came to WWE. They never exactly made their intentions clear in any of their Manson-esc vignettes and their leader, Bray Wyatt, still goes off on crazy tangents about the WWE and society at large. The Wyatt Family were basically a swamp-dwelling redneck cult who joined the WWE initially to fuck up Kane's shit, but ended up staying to make life difficult for everyone else. There was no real rhyme or reason to anything they did, they just did it under the constant brainwashing of their leader Bray. While they've been split up for a while now, each member has retained a certain amount of crazy that keeps them wired in singles competition.
Wrestlemania
Even more bizarre than absolutely everything above is the fact that there is one date in time reserved for fans of and participants in this horseshit insane action drama to indulge themselves. Millions upon millions of dollars are put into its production, millions upon millions of people tune in, thousands upon thousands of people travel from around the globe to make it to the event, and all of this is in the name of honouring the tradition of hyperbole in theatre and making a lot of money doing it.
Tonight, people will scratch their heads, people will laugh, people will likely cry, and a jacked-up dinosaur in shorts is going to fucking kill a Samoan guy in front of thousands of dewy-eyed children. That's entertainment.
It takes a very special kind of hubris to grab a concept or a product so ingrained in the public eye and to produce a shoddy replicate of it in order to hitch a publicity ride and turn a profit. How many children have ripped open their presents on Christmas morning expecting to find a copy of the latest Transformers DVD in their grubby little hands, only to discover that Granny and Gramps had been duped by the pound shop into picking up the shockingly titled rip-off, Transmorphers, instead? How many minutes were spent writing the script to a movie that had already been written long ago by the coke-snorting tyrants of Hollywood? How many actors have stared wearily at their own reflection and thought just one more film, just get through this one more and then you can move on and chase the blockbuster future you promised yourself.
The Asylum studio in Burbank, California, may be able to provide those answers, if they weren't so busy producing counterfeit versions of your christening video tape and distributing it to chronic masturbators and kitsch fanatics.
I'm not even entirely sure if I have anything against The Asylum, you have to reserve a morsel of respect, or at least hold a kind of mirthful disbelief, for a film studio with the fortitude to literally rip-off every blockbuster film of the last ten years and to do so without even the slightest hint of shame. This is a group of people who think shame is a kind of shellfish you can eat at a swanky restaurant, purchased with the money they pulled in from Alien vs. Hunter (2007). They sit there at candlelit beach side restaurants, unbuttoning their trousers and crooning 'That was a lovely plate of shame, see that my compliments reach the chef.'
I've done quite enough writing, I think it best to let the DVD covers speak for themselves.
Enough mewling. I’ll empty this wallet with lightning speed. In the best bar in the world. Where nobody knows me and I’m ignored from the moment I walk in by everyone except the members of staff I’ll have no choice but to engage. If I’m lucky enough I’ll feel unwelcome as if all I’m doing is kicking sand in your eyes. They’ll check the lightbulb over me but it’s working fine and if they don’t give me something to bitch about I’ll bitch about just that.
Service with a smile. Perfect. Inanity via telegraph.
“What are you smiling for?”
“Here you go sir, that’ll be 4.50.”
“Thanks Happy Hour. And don’t call me ‘sir’. It makes you look subservient... or subordinate... One of those. Actually, call me ‘Your Highness’.”
A nook, my drink and the crossword puzzle. Suddenly my mood shifts from one of pithy, aggressive boredom to one of boring, born-to-be-bored boredom. I’ve filled too many squares with names of people whose necks I’d like to stand on to finish the crossword so I fire up (oh, the excitement) the jukebox. Crap crap crap crap crap crep crecp ccrq[p cr p crqp crap crap crsap crapsc rsapdka crqapo crwp crap crap crqp ceaqp cea;p crwp crvp crvap cap crpc vrlwq and finally some decent stuff.
The place starts to fill up. Loud insecure types laughing more and more at less and less. Women and men trying to act young by scoring boys and girls trying to act old. That lad I hate. Cool people. Happy Hour is, in both or more respects, long gone. I’m going to get fucked-up-drunk. After all I don’t have to work tomorrow. I play Spiderman at kids parties.
I won't even attempt to legitimize the following article with an introduction.
Pick-up lines for the staggeringly corrupt:
1. I would literally pull a knife on a baby panda for a moment alone with your socks.
2. I really like that band on your t-shirt, we should have them playing in the background while you burn me with lighters.
3. You have the most beautiful smile, I look forward to picturing it on my death bed.
4. Did you fall from the sky? I only ask this because I'm an expert in suspension bondage and wouldn't let that happen to you.
5. Your current lover looks like they might be incredibly boring, you should come live with me on my house boat.
6. Your current lover looks like they might be incredibly boring, I have most of the Merzbow records on vinyl.
7. Your current lover looks like they might be incredibly boring, whereas I've just spent the night in jail for flashing the postman.
8. I am so horny for you that I've actually started to develop really itchy hives.
9. I'm actually required by law to stay away from computers, but can I have your land line number?
10. Will you please just spit on me?
11. Will you please just put on this mask and blow smoke in my face?
12. Will you please just sit on the other end of the bed and let me bark at you like a dog for a while?
13. Will you please just dress up like Genghis Khan and pretend to invade me?
14. Wanna see how long we can both go without oxygen? I have a deprivation tank for this very reason.
15. I've got seven other people in furry costumes and half a bag of crushed Bromadol at home and all we're missing is you.
16. You look great tonight, you'd look even better behind a two-way mirror while I weep openly and masturbate.
17. I don't know if you know this, but I'm a pretty big deal on the hospital parkour scene.
18. I don't know if you know this, but I run ThatMakesItNotInsane.
19. I don't know if you know this, but my spirit animal is the dragon.
20. This is my wedding dress for when you propose to me. It's made of your skin.
21. If I had a boner-meter right now, I'd only be at 1 because I'm currently wearing a device that painfully limits blood-flow to my dick. It really hurts.
22. I want to come at you like a frenzied drug sniffer dog.
23. I will pay you a fiver to let me lick your armpit.
24. It's just a bit of poo. It won't bite.
25. I scream myself into exhaustion thinking about the moisture on your tongue.
26. I would feed every child in this town to a volcano if I thought it would earn me the chance to lap up the soap suds off your shower curtain.
27. You're definitely the only 10 in this room. I know because I've been around to everyone.
28. No, please, don't leave your coat with me, I will try to eat it.
29. You have no idea how much Valium I had to take to stop myself from licking you chair.
30. At this point, I'm just happy you haven't called the police.
I've been under no illusion that this party can go on forever, but rather than mourn the undergraduate endtimes or attempt to relocate the party, I've already begun to fashion a future for myself from all the hopes and dreams I've birthed while positively abominable with the drink. We aren't here for a very long time, so why waste these years on anything but making a future of our dreams? For what is the future but a sketch of of our true desires and ambitions?
I suppose the future can also be crushingly barren, but that's only if you're a complete square or are addicted to the flesh-eating drug, krokodil. Don't let your life be a drag, avoid mindless salary slavery and krokodil as if they're kin.
Now that I've finally run the full course of the drudging and confused Irish education system, it is now time for me to be spewed forth into the 'real world' like chunks of vomit to a tiled chipper floor already completely sodden with vomit. It's times like these that society asks 'well, what kind of person are YOU going to be?', at which point any sane and reasonable person would backhand society right in its dirty blushing face and cry 'You're a rotten bastard, society, and there'll be none of you where I'm headed'. At this point one might consider using their sub-par driving skills to escape in a pilfered Honda Civic that will later be stripped of everything of value in order to buy the ham and cheese toasties that will govern your diet from here out.
Anyway, back to me, I'm the important one here.
My master plan has its beginnings planted in modest ground. I will doubtlessly find myself in some kind of office, maybe taking calls or making coffee for my sorrowful Half Windsor overlords. Starting from the bottom should never be seen as shameful, Rome wasn't built in a day, despite the fact that it may very well have been reduced to rubble in such time. Regardless, I will cast myself into the big pond like the hook of a fishing rod, eagerly anticipating the pull of opportunity fish. When such fortune finds me, maybe I'll be promoted to upper management or made CEO of the company, I will then spring at my chance and burn the entire fucking building to the ground along with a body double of myself.
The morning's newspapers will read "PornHub CEO Liam Doyle Dies in Office Blaze", and that's exactly what we'll let the dribbling bastards think. This amounts to phase one of my master plan.
Now that records of my death have been established amid world wide news coverage, I have essentially ducked under the grid and will be free to do as I please in the solitude of non-existence. I will retire to underground slums and live among the mole people who will turn a blind eye to my sinister dealings on the promise that I make mankind pay for what it has done to them. At this point, my only objective is to create time with my only tool being patience. I might use this long period of waiting to better myself, perhaps take up the sitar. I'll sit there among the lowly mole folk, play the sitar for them, and I'll say 'Look at me, mole people, I play the sitar. Aren't I alternative?'
With many seasons now baked and frozen, I will rise from the underground with my new identity. I will now be known as Alfonso Heat, an Olympic swimming wise-guy of Spanish extraction. Under my new persona I will travel back to the surface and establish my name as a local character, kicking open the doors of every pub in town and firing off finger bullets at all my new friends. They'll shift in their bar stools and they'll say 'That Alfonso knows how to party, I sure want to be his friend / tireless sex colleague'. But Alfonso has no time for such trivial dilly-dallying, for beneath that fake moustache and rather obvious wig, I will be plotting phase four of my master plan.
With Alfonso Heat now at the very heart of the Dublin social scene, I will make like Manson and corrupt the impressionable youth using only my wit and furor loquendi. When the dumb asshole children have accepted me as their surrogate father, I will instruct them to say goodbye to their families, for we, as a family, will be moving to the Wicklow mountains to live as sheepskin wearing Anarcho Primitives. Of course, you might be wondering, what will all my Dublin friends think when I suddenly leave to the mountains with a horde of teenagers, well I've got that covered as well, because Alfonso Heat has already been found dead in the bath tub of his loft apartment by the Liffey. This will of course be a second body double.
Having spent a number of years in the mountains with my degenerate stooges, plundering booty from the traveling medicine wagons and grooming them to become the heartless killing machines they are, we will descend unto Dublin on motorcycle, hitting every town on our way. We will carve out a road of red carnage, robbing post offices, hassling the older generation, and beheading anyone with the gall to stand up to us. The newspapers will call us "The Tumultuous Tewlve", and those that have not already died by our hands will quiver at our very mention.
On our final dive into the swimming pool of total destruction, we will charge the city with spears in our hands and hate in our hearts. Dublin will doubtlessly be expecting us and will have called in the military to meet us half-way, and when that trembling phone call is made from Kildare Street, the final phase of my master plan will be nearing fruition. We will line ourselves up to meet the anticipating army and say our final goodbyes to each other. We will hug, console, kiss passionately, and thank fate for giving us this moment, and then we will crush our pedals and ride forward into a hail of machine gun fire and oblivion.
When the dust has settled and the bodies identified, I will then rise up from my hiding place in the Wicklow mountains, spare a moment for my third body double, and return to the comforting normality of town life, probably pulling pints in a craft beer place or playing synthesizer on the streets for pennies.
We are the authors of the future, so let us write it in the blood of shitty teenagers who don't even listen to Aerosmith.
