One time I got my ram stolen.

It was the morning of the Harvest Festival. My thirteenth Harvest Festival. And as such, I was going to get to prove my Worth to the Tribe. I was going to sacrifice Demeter, the family ram, in front of the Great Altar, and in doing so I’d be acknowledged as a Member Whose Voice is Heard.

It was to be a bloody, gruesome, and glorious rite of passage.

But I woke up to Skinny Tina, my kid sister, screeching “He stoled it! He stoled Demeter!”

“Who stole Demeter?”

“Peter-Boy!”

Peter-Boy was my rival, and not in no friendly way, neither. His family’d provided more for him than they’d ever should have. And the Tribe’d provided more than it should have. But he just couldn’t get his shit together. So when he lost his family’s goat just a week before his thirteenth Harvest Festival, he found himself in the most unenviable position of not having a viable sacrifice for the Great Altar.

No sacrifice, no way to prove Worth to the Tribe. And let me tell you, the stink of trying to prove your Worth during your fourteenth Harvest? It don’t dissipate quick.

So when I gently instructed Peter-Boy to “Give me back the ram or I’ll tear your goddamn lungs outta yer chest” it shouldn’t’ve been no surprise that he’d flash a blade. But! It shouldn’t’ve been no surprise to him when I flashed my own. We darted and slashed and dashed, and when it was all over there was a clear victor.

That nite, I became a Member Whose Voice is Heard. And I did it by spilling blood for the second time that day. And it was bloody and gruesome and glorious.

—-

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! Remember way back in kindergarten when you’d have to bring in something to show the class? And then you’d tell the class all `bout it? And everyone would get excited? And then you’d kinda forget that you were even in the Indoctrination Camp school in the first place?

Think of the MMC as the same idea, just amplified in importance. What sort of pop culture, subculture, and uncultured nonsense are you going to consume to stave off the Void this week?

I’ll get us started!

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Welcome to Doldrums City, comrades. Population: Me (at the very least). I’m sick. I’m tired. The Earth is melting, our government is run by lily livered cretins and monsters. Football is over. The sky is ash. I’m stick. I’m tired. All I want to do is sleep, masturbate wildly while screaming at the ceiling fan, and eat. Eat, and eat, and eat, and eat. Rinse. Repeat.

The columns must flow, though. The Commute must be Monday Morning’d. So here we are. So here we are.

This is MondayMorningCommute by way of TuesdayAfternoon.

Being MMC BYO TA, the task at hand is simple. I share what I’m looking forward to this week. What I’m hoping will rocket me out of Doldrums City, comrades. Then you share your own anticipatory happenings in the comments section.

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I suppose, invariably, writing Monday Morning Commute on an actual Monday evening will find me: tired, stank-ass from the gym, palming my eye sockets attempting to figure out what to say. So, invariably, here we are. Here I am. Stank ass. Tired. Palming my eye sockets, praying to the Elder Ones to provide Divination. I’m tired, you’re tired. I’m somewhat fulfilled, in a somewhat fulfilling job, that compensates for its fulfillment by being tenuously existent from semester to semester, and perpetually stressful about said existence. But as the French Philosopher CaffPow once said, “C’est la adjunct life or some shit.” He said that. I said that. I hope you’re feeling at least as fulfilled as me, minus the stress, the perpetual scrotum-shrinking stress of contemplating the harrowing, horrifying prospects of what Next Semester Will Bring, less than a week into This Semester.

Fuck, fuck me, I’ve gotten myself off one of them Old Tangents. They used to be about how I beat my meat inconsolably to gifs of Katy Perry or some shit. Many moons ago. Now they’re just another tepid meat-case lamenting its tepidity whilst stuck in said meat-case, completely ignoring how Goddamn Good the meat-case has it Relative To So Much Of The World.

But, uh, buddy. Buddies. How are you folk-fuckers doing? What are you up to this week? Watching anything dope? What are you sweating? Anticipating playing anything dope? Sharing the answers to said questions is not cheating, folk-fuckers. No, in fact, it’s encouraged in this post here’s comments section. One could even say it’s the fucking raison d’être (the phrase popped into my head but truthfully I had to Google it to confirm it actually was a phrase) of this entire column. Generating a self-sustaining Community Bubble wherein we can share what we’re STOKED and JACKED for during a given week.

Me, this little ole devil? I’ll go first.

Hope to see you in the comments section! Folk-fuckers!

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I’m fucking tired, man. Like — way tired. Like — eyelids half closed. But here I am! But here we are. This is Monday Morning Commute. The column where I share with you fellow rotting meat-sacks what I’m looking forward to each week. Furthermore, additionally, I then, with all my audacity, ask you to share what *you* anticipating across the next seven.

So! Without further ado, without further verbosity, without further self-indulgent blathering, let’s do this!

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The March of the Monsters.

It will reach its first crescendo, as they slither into the symbolic house of power this week. Here they come! Ancient ones! With gnarled fangs protruding from ruptured sockets. Here they come! With blasphemous sores upon oozing phalanges! Gnashing and beying for the life-force of the wounded, the wearied. Here they come! Tentacles and ill-intent! Here they come! Smashing and ripping and devouring. Here they come! Blood in their eyes, death in their mouths! Here they come!

What can you do? Shelter-in-place! Here! At the Space-Ship Omega! In this here post! Monday Morning Commute! By way of Tuesday Afternoon. Where we share what we’re doing this week, what we’re looking forward to this week. You know, when we’re not preparing the survival kits, building the house-sized umbrellas to shield our domiciles from the shrapnel borne out of shorn blood-meat from conquered deities.

The March of the Monsters.

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Oh what a day, what a lovely day. The terrifying, inevitable transition from cultural entropy into the feigned doubling-down of effort and self-disciplined. Yes, yes, friends. Comrades. Frequenters of Space-Ship Omega. It’s the beginning of a new year, the cessation of the end-of-year celebrations. Darkness looms. Deadlines loom.

Hark, hark, may the Ennui strike you more as a honeyed blanket of anaesthetization. And not, oh dear god, and not as the sort of bowels-liquefying anxiety that plunges you through your corpus, through your bed, through your plane of existence and onto the bottom of the bottomless chasm of existential dread.

Oh, you need a lifeline? Oh, you need something to help with this transition back into the wild world of labor extraction? Well, buddy. Well, pal. Well, comrade. I got you. I got you.

See, this here jam is the Monday Morning Commute jam. And here at this here jam I list the various things I’m using to get myself through a work week. The TV I’m watching to close my third-eye, the music I’m using to block out the droning clarion call of Listlessness. The video games I’m employ for the total deinvigorating oculuar-auditory shutdown I just may need.

That uh, pal, that uh. Got a bit dark. But fuck it, fuck it with gumption and assertiveness.

We get can make it through this reentry together.

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Man, I ain’t got nothing to do.

Wife’s home. Wood stove pumping a pleasant, hearty heat. Admittedly, an unobtrusive but steady current of holiday corpulence-fueled diarrhea getting me up off the couch. But as I said, unobtrusive. A marginal push, a half-hearted wipe, and I’m back on the couch. Lounging. Admittedly, stank ass’d.

But hey.

Man, I ain’t got nothing to do.

It’s that wonderful liminal state between Christmas and January 2nd. Where the entire world seems slumberous, if not not working.

So let’s spend the hour, the day, the week together. This is Monday Morning Commute! Where we share what we’re enjoying during a given week! So, hark! The Calories and Diarrhea Golems sing! What are you up to? Let’s hang.

‘Cause.

Man, I ain’t got nothing to do.

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It’s one of those lazy liminal states for a lot of us here in the Empire. They strike every so often. The early summer. The beginning of fall. The end of the year. Where the great masses of us march to work. Going through the motions as holidays loom. Christmas. The New Year. Oh sure physically we may be there. Oh sure, oh sure.

But mentally? Checked out. Checked out more than usual. Those without vacation days, those not wanting to spend vacation days, attend their vocations. Their corporeal and astral forms in disharmony. One sitting in a shitty, non-ergonomic chair (if so lucky). The other surfing the metaplanes, everyone else’s lethargy giving license to their own.

This here is Monday Morning Commute. It’s a lazy week for many. A liminal week for more. So why not, why not spend it here at the Space-Ship OMEGA. Share what you’re looking forward to this week. Be it the arrival of your Christmas break. Be it the arrival of a movie in the theaters you want to see.

Anything. Everything!

Let’s traverse the linear-liminal time-plane together.

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Standing in front of the starcruiser’s big bay windows, Lonnie stared into the abyss of the chalice in his hands.

“G’head now, m’boy, no needsfer delayin’.”

“But, but, Grampa…I…I don’t wanna. It smells bad.”

“Maybe so, maybe so. But if we’re gonna kick this baby into hyperspace, we needta go to sleep first. So be a g’boy and drink up.”

Lonnie’s gaze shifted from the chalice to bay windows and then back to the chalice. He thought, just for a moment. A single moment. Just long enough to remember Momma and Poppa and Brother Reggie and how good it felt to be on terra firma, grass between the toes and sun upon the brow. How good it would feel, again.

And then he drank.

“Thazzaboy! Okay, Lonnie, y’goan to your sleep-pod now and I’mma set the coordinates!”

“Sweet dreams, Grampa! Hope you dream of the sun like I’m gonna!”

“Thazz right! Thazz right! Dream of the sun!”

And with that Grampa took a swig deep enough to empty the chalice. And then he sat down in front of the big bay windows of the starcruiser. And then he started to dream of the sun. And then he dreamed of his son, and dreamed of his son dreaming of Lonnie. And then he wept and wept and closed his eyes tight.

`Cause when you’re two hyperjumps away from home and you’re out of fuel, all you can do is dream of the sun.

—-

This is a public announcement. The MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE has been commandeered. My name is Rendar Frankenstein and I mean you no harm. Join me and we’ll discuss what the fuck we’ll do in the hopes of getting out of this workweek in one piece.

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I’m just fucking done, man.

The semester has unravelled my precariously knitted-together psyche, spooling it across the OMNIVERSE. If you’ve randomly tripped today, know that it was probably a shredded, knotted, bloodied-strand of my former-consciousness. What was formerly an ebullient, marginally sarcastic whelp has been transformed into a quick-to-fret, foggy-headed nightmare.

I’m just fucking done, man.

This here is Monday Morning Commute, by way of Tuesday Afternoon, sponsored by Ennui and A Colossal, Albeit Ineffective Amount of Caffeine.

This is what I’m looking forward to, this is what’s on my mind, this is what’s simmering in my soul, this week.

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