Servin’ a life-sentence on Spaceship Earth is a tedious, painful, agonizing wonder.

Why’s that? For one thing, there’s the fact that everyone you love will die. Your best friend. Your kid sister. Your longtime mistress. Your high school math teacher.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Along the way you’re guaranteed to deal with inevitable body-breakdown. Maybe you’ll abuse your body. Maybe somebody else will fuck it up. Even if you think you’re unscathed, the sands of time are wearing away at your flesh-vehicle’s gears. Every single day. Every single moment. Until when, you ask?

Until they’re so smooth that they don’t move shit.

But alas! There’s hope! Even those of us who’re agin’ more like vinegar than wine have a fightin’ chance at experiencin’ glory! Not only are we fortunate enough to have been imbued with consciousnesses, but we get to live in a hyperreal future! Are things royally fucked up? Sure! But we live in times in which anything is possible!

So if you start to feel a chill as an existential shadow lurks over your shoulder, spin around and blast that motherfucker with a science fiction repulsor ray!

—-

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! I’m goin’ to show off this week’s strategies for keeping me pleased with existence. I suggest you liven up the party by entering the dance circle that is the comments section.

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Apologies! Apologies for the tardiness! I didn’t know Rendar wasn’t able to do the column this week until he didn’t do it. I received a message by nightingale this morning. Told the bro to not go necking any beautiful androgynous bitties on the moons of Jupiter but goddamn if we don’t all have to learn from experience. Now the kid is in bed. Testicles the size of basketballs, scrotum the shade of an egg plant. Oh sure they’ll go down in time — it’s merely an intergalactic viral infection. But let’s not talk about the sores, the oozing, the buckets of indescribable white sludge that drain slowly down his bed within the Spaceship Omega. Those will be gone too, but at what psychic cost? For all of us?

Let’s instead quickly run down the various arts, farts, and shenanigans we’re enjoying this week. This is Monday Morning Commute.

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Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! First, I’m goin’ to throw a bit of fiction your way — this week sees another entry in the ongoing adventures of Absalom Fabliaux. Then, I’ll guide you through some of the ways I’ll be entertaining myself through the workweek. Then, you pony up your own suggestions, making your presence known in the comments section.

Let’s do this!

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“Oh, I can’t possibly imagine that you’d consort with pigs,” chided Thelma the Bartender as she brought over two bottles and two shot glasses.

Over the months that saw Absalom writing at this bar, he’d grown fond of Thelma. She was busty and acerbic and two tax brackets below most of the clientele. More importantly, she was most attentive to Absalom, having memorized his preferred drink-sequence.

Serving the public ain’t easy, and doin’ it well is damn-near impossible.

“Thelma, goddess of libation that you are, how many times do I have to warn you against eavesdroppin’? It’s not becomin’ of a woman like you. If you want to experience a life-changin’ conversation, you mustn’t resort to NSA tactics,” Absalom gave a shot-in-the-dark wink that defied his age, “just ask me out to dinner.”

“Oh yes, ‘dinner,’ that lovely euphemism for those too cowardly to just come out ask for it. Sex. Even if it were my greatest desire to bed you – and believe me, it isn’t – I simply wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”

“And why not?”

“Are you serious?” Following Absalom’s implicit instructions, Thelma set down the two shot glasses. One for a formely-respected, now lying-in-the-gutter-but-lookin’-through-the-smog-hopin’-to-see-a-star Writer. The other for a stoned-on-booze-and-slowly-realizin’-that-my-careerist-aspirations-will-never-get-me-high-off-life Intern. Between them, she placed a bottle of bourbon.

And for Absalom, a fresh bottle of Pepsi.

“By the gods, of course I’m serious! Why wouldn’t you bed me?”

“Mr. Fabliaux-”

“It’s Señor Fabliaux, Thelma, and you know it!”

“Whatever! Even if I wanted to sleep with you, I wouldn’t. And the reason? Your ever-deteriorating old-man body couldn’t handle it! Having sex with me would literally kill you.”

“Ah, but it’d be a most glorious death.”

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! First, I give ya’ll a bit of fiction to get the mind warmed up! Then, I run through some of the ways I’ll be entertaining myself over the course of the workweek. After I’ve tired myself out, you hit up the comments section and share your strategies for fending off the Beasts of Boredom!

Yes, it’s basically the Spaceship OL way station.

Okay, let’s rock!

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Goddamn!

Well, we’re back in the workweek, which means that spirits’re bound to be low.  How why shouldn’t they be? There’re matters which need attending! There’re bosses lookin’ over our shoulders! Hell, there might even times that things have to be done by!

The horror!

Luckily, this here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! First, I’m goin’ to detail some of the small pleasures that’ll keep me from turning my bathtub and toaster into a fatal 2-in-1 combo. Then, you hit up the comments section and share your own entertainment strategies for survival. Finally, we all reply to one another, making for a totally geektastic show-and-tell.

Work sucks, life rules, let’s do this.

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The Pie-Eyed former-bibliophile was flabbergasted, which was new for him. Drunk?  Awkward? Socially maladjusted? Oh, he was plenty comfortable with these. But in this moment, he was straight-up flabbergasted.

“Goddamn boy, what’re you lookin’ so flabbergasted for?”

“‘Cause you says,” a youthful forehead was slapped by its own palm, “youhadda shackkup with a witch. A witch?!”

Absalom bellowed, “Oh yes! There’s no two ways about it, Susy’s a witch! Hell, she has to be the witchiest witch I’ve ever come across in my time!”

“You mean with a cauldron and potions and brum-stick and all?”

“Well, not exactly.”

Pie-Eyed was making the most of his ever-dwindling faculties to figure out what the hell Absalom meant. He lifted his drink to his lips, hesitated for a moment, and then drained the entire thing. “Wait! Wait! Did she have magical powers?!”

“Yes and no.” Absalom chucked to himself. “I mean, we can get into all sorts of discussions about ‘magic’ and of what it is composed. Access to supernatural realms? ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology,’ is that it? The ability to astound, to create scenarios that push the limits of imagination? Artistry? The ability to realize to turn an idea into a tangible product? Do any, or all, of these constitute magic?”

“Uhh…”

“So we’re coastin’ on fumes, and I swear to the Maker that we sputter to a stop right in Susy’s driveway! No damn brakes or nothin’! The jalopy croaks right in the driveway.”

“It, it,” Pie-Eyed paused to burp, but continued, “it was kismet?”

“It sure seemed like it at the time.” Absalom sratched his grey-goin’-white stubble and flagged down the bartender in the hopes of getting some peanuts. “There we were, a carful of over-eager youths, sweatin’ testosterone and hankerin’ booze. And what was before us? A cabin that looks more like a palace, set woods that look more like a national park, with bonfires lightin’ up a keg-party that looks more like Saturnalia!”

“Betcha couldn’t wait to get outtathat car!”

“I’d take that bet – I stayed right where I was, didn’t unbuckle or nothin’.”

Once again, Pie-Eyed was flabbergasted.

“I know what you’re thinkin.’” Absalom swooped in with a preemptive strike. “How could I sit in the car with the prospect of inebriation and fornication mere yards before me? Well, I’ll tell ya,” the old-timer took a rip of Pepsi. “It’s `cause I knew about Susy’s reputation. I’d never met her before, but we ran in the same circles. And the word was that she was a goddamn man-eater. A seductress. A master of cardiac-vivisection. After I’d made the call to see if we could crash at her place, I told my crew that I’d be sleepin’ in the car and encouraged to do the same.”

“They lissen toya?”

“Hell no! The car’d barely come to a rest when those monkey-brains were already runnin’ towards the coeds, practically unzippin’ their flies as they went.”

Absalom Fabliaux, ever the consummate gentleman, slid the bowl of peanuts to the Pie-Eyed intern. When a passerby attempted to filch a peanut, Señor Fabliaux grabbed the interloper by the collar, growled that the “Yuppie Scumsucker better drop my friend’s nut,” and then dispatched him with a firm shove.

Pie-Eyed was grateful.

“So, wuddya wake up inna morning? Allyur friends hanged over and witthur pants down?”

“I wish. At about three in the mornin’ I wake up to find my buddy Urie frantically bangin’ on the window, screamin’ for help.”

“What wuzzit?!”

“To quote Urie: ‘You’re right, Susy’s a witch – she’s turned our friends into fucking pigs!’”

—-

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE!

I’m going to show you some of the ways I’ll be keepin’ myself entertained over the next few days. Then, you (as an ever-faithful contributor to the Spaceship OL passenger-community), will hit up the comments section and do the same. Before all’s said and done, we’ll have had a nice round of digital show’n’tell.

Break the glass and grab your Emergency Word-Weapon!

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With a fresh Pepsi in hand, Absalom took a deep breath and began his tale.

“We’d been tryin’ to get home for ages, and we were all in rough shape. Beat-up. Hungover. Outta gas. And hungry, to boot! There wasn’t no way we’d be able to travel through the night. So I had to call in a favor to woman I’d’ve rather not ever seen again.”

“Waitta second,” interjected the Pie-Eyed intern, sole audience member of this performance, “whereyou says you comed from? Why’s you away inna furs-place?”

“Ah, yes. It’s a long story. But in short, this guy I knew – friend-of-a-friend sort of thing – was all sorts of salty `bout his ex-girlfriend bein’ with another man. So, he assembled a crew to travel `cross a bunch of states and win her back. With nothin’ to do but sit around drinkin’ beers and readin’ science fiction, I volunteered for what I’d assumed would be a grand adventure.”

“Wuzzit?”

“You’re goddamned right it was! I don’t think I’ll ever see nothin’ more glorious than a midnight fist-fight in a donut shop – everything blurrin’ together in a wash of neon light and black coffee and red blood!”

Absalom seized a moment to swish cola across his gums and crack his knuckles, like hitting the reset button on a broken-bodied Storyteller Machine. He flagged down the bartender and re-upped Pie-Eyed’s drink.

“Phanks man, but I dunno if I needa ‘nother.”

“Kid, it ain’t `bout need! Hell, ain’t no needs bein’ met in this entire bar! This place is `bout the Tapioca Populace foolin’ themselves into believin’ that they can even conjure up the notion of danger or excitement or novelty! So drink your drink!”

Pie-Eyed obeyed and Absalom continued.

“So anyways, after spillin’ teeth in the donut shop we attracted some attention, so we had to scram. Hightailin’ it out, we got ourselves into all sorts of trouble. Drinkin’ and fornicatin’ and fightin’. Glorious!  But before y’knew it, a three-day drive had mutated into two weeks. Two goddamn weeks.”

“Thazz,” Pie-Eyed slurred and sipped and slurred, “thazz crazy. Whattya do?”

“Well, with the gas-gauge on E, the backseat-keg on its last pint, and the paper absent from our wallets, I decided to rely on the generosity of Susy.”

“Who’s Susy?”

“Susy,” Absalom paused to take a rip of Pepsi and stare into the middle distance, “Susy’s a goddamn witch.”

—-

Come one, come all! This here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! What’s that, you ask? Well, once a week Spaceship OL has to touch down on a nearby moon or satellite-weigh station for refueling purposes. During this time, I share the upcoming itinerary with the crew, detailing the means by which I’ll be navigating our rusty pop-culture mind-vessel through the Omniverse. After sharing my plans, the floor is opened up and everyone is encouraged to share their prospective space-maps.

In other words, we nerd out about the various ways we’ll be entertaining ourselves.

Let’s do the damn thing!

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Absalom Fabliaux was halfway done with a breakthrough paragraph when he was interrupted.

“Haythaire, old man! Haythaire! Whatturya doing? Writing a poetry? An’ wireyou dranking Pepsi?”

Although Fabliaux found creative solace in the white-noise of this particular bar, he also knew that it was inevitably accompanied by crescendos of human detritus. Oily Three-Pieces clamoring about the day’s acquisitions. Stock Pirates tryin’ to sandbag tear-floods with shot glasses. Little Black Dresses guffawing their ways into Designer Pants, hoping to find wallets in the process. In this case, a Pie-Eyed Intern intrigued by the sight of an obviously out of place Miscreant drinkin’ Pepsi and punchin’ at a word-processor.

“Searsly, man, whillyu read me a poetry?”

In his younger and more vulnerable years, Absalom might’ve responded with a left hook. He’d had no patience for drunken curiosities. Many a tooth’d been spilled because of some errant remark to which offense’d been taken. This was, most likely, a symptom of the disease known as Self-Loathing, as Señor Fabliaux himself was once known as the most unabashedly drunken, incorrigibly inquisitive writers of his generation.

But with age comes patience, and there ain’t no doubt that Absalom Fabliaux was old as fuck.

“Son, I’m not writing a poem, I’m writing a novel.”

A vapid gaze spread into a smile. Pie-Eyed was excited. “A novel? Like a book?!”

“Exactly.”

“Oh shit! I usedta read books all the time, when I was a liddle kid…I haven’t even thoughta readin’ a book in years.”

Absalom took a hearty rip of refreshing cola. “Well, you should – there ain’t no goddamn experience like sittin’ down with a good book.”

Pie-Eyed’s head lolled from shoulder to shoulder in equal parts intoxication and amazement. This old bastard – who appeared more suited for dock-work or trash-disposal than word-crafting – had reminded him of a lost love. An affinity suppressed. A lust relegated to dreams.

Unprompted, Pie-Eyed leaned forward, tapped Absalom’s temple, and asked, “So, do ya got a good book in there?”

“I don’t know.” After a beat, the writer tapped his left breast, “But in here, I’ve got ex-wives and dead friends and missed opportunities. And there ain’t no ground more fertile for stories than this sort of heaviness.”

“Will…will you tell me about a dead friend?”

“You’re goddamn right I will. Barkeep! I need another Pepsi over here!”

—-

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! As the navigator of Spaceship OL, I’m goin’ to chart an itinerary through the Pop-Nonsense Territories. After you check out the destinations I’ll be steering us towards this week, it’s up to you to hit up the comments section — where’ll you be heading this week? Comic Book Station? The TV Armory? The Cinema Sand Dunes?

In other words, it’s a show-and-tell danceathon for the Digital Nerd Crew.

Let’s headspin!

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Absalom Fabliaux had drained fifteen Pepsi-Colas and he felt like a goddamn king.

Sitting in the bar for the better part of four hours, Absalom whittled away at a couple of chapters, clickety-clackin’ at his keyboard with little regard for his surroundings. Smarmy suits and slicked-back trustfunds poured shots into the fertile secretaries that’d someday be their suburban broodmares. Y’know, after accounts were conquered and four-oh-one-kays secured and dividends divided. The digital music lasered its way into their brains, encouraging the Vanilla Paste People to strut their stuff.

And still, Absalom forged ahead, undeterred.

His writer-comrades didn’t understand why he’d write in the midst of such chaos. Unlike him, they flocked to their studies and libraries and offices and espresso bars. But Absalom Fabliaux never found himself more distracted than when he tried to work in such venues. To him, these places were the domiciles of good — silence and thought and books, which contain no little amount of that stuff called the Incredible. And, of course, coffee.

Absalom Fabliaux could never count on making a deadline if he set up shop in a Den of Wonder.

His office? An upscale bar in the financial district. His workday? Happy hour until close. In the eye of the storm, Absalom Fabliaux knew he’d get work done. Zero temptation to talk to anyone. A consistent environment, day-in and day-out. With the rot in his periphery, he had just enough white noise to fuel his words. And to top it all off, the place served glass-bottle Pepsis.

As he requested another, Absalom chuckled to himself. “I’ll be goddamned if I’m not the only bastard who should’ve been cut off but ain’t.”

Absalom Fabliaux had drained sixteen Pepsi-Colas and he knew himself to be a goddamn king.

This is the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! First, I spew words at you in the form of a short story or vomit-essay. Then, I show you the entertainment-debris I’ll be rummaging through in the next days. Lastly, you hit up the comments section and tell everyone what you’ll be doin’ to get through the week.

Rock and roll, baby!

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It’s been a week since I reappeared on the deck of the ship, smiling through the sludge I’d been wading in for far too long.

I was worried about the transition. Captain Pow had every right to be salty, seeing as I’d disappeared without any warning.  Piloting this old war-bird with even the most seasoned of navigators can be a goddamn nightmare, so my absence certainly didn’t help.Whereas I’d anticipated being on the receiving end of a Big-Brother Bitch-Slap, he greeted me with open arms.

The stalwart captain welcoming his prodigal brother.

Since then, the pop-culture seas have been kind to me, revitalizing me after an extended absence. My sealegs are strong, helping me regain my strength through the wonder of muscle memory. And still, I’ve yet to completely return to form. I’m still suffering the residual effects of being lost in that Modern-Life Maelstrom.

Every other nite, my crewmates find me sleep-screaming about memos to read and projects to complete and bills to pay and other such nonsense that crushes spirits.

So how’m I going to overcome my infected blood? How do I enjoy the ride when I know the high Highs are always curbed by low Lows? Well, I’m goin’ to keep readin’ the maps and chartin’ the stars. I’m going to breathe deep the life-giving air found these glorious, treacherous, horrifyingly wondrous astral-seas. I’m goin’ to suck the pulp until its dried and withered and I choke to death on the juice, clutching my throat and smiling all the way.