Spare some change, kid?

Excuse me, sir.

It's all right, man.

I got nothing.

You want to tell me you got nothing?

Take the jangling change out of your fucking pocket first.

And the ones that do stop to give you something, they all got that self-satisfied grin all over their smug faces, like they've just confirmed that they really are the most impressive fucking thing in the world.

And you just got to bow your head and say, God bless you, as if there isn't an actual exchange going on.

Your bloated sense of self-worth is equal to the hole that's been ripped out of my dignity.

See you, Jack!

You don't choose to be me.

You start off with dreams and optimism and hard work.

And then you realize that those qualities were planted in you by the same force that's been conniving to smash you apart with a fucking sledgehammer.

And then when you're lying on the floor begging that force for help, you notice, my God, it's laughing.

And that's when it hits you that this evil fuck has been laughing the entire fucking time.

And the only way you're going to shut it up is to laugh right back in its face.

And twice as hard.

I sleep in that, as long as some asshole doesn't sneak in there first.

The last prick I caught in there, still picking the glass out of his face.

There's a place to piss out here, a place to shit, a place to fuck, and a place to die.

And the only thing they got in common is you wouldn't be caught dead near any of them.

But don't even think this shit can't happen to you.

I wasn't born in a puddle.

I used to be an executive.

I started in the mailroom underground before I earned 19 raises and shot up 42 floors to have my own personal view of this whole fucking cesspool.

I was also married to a wife, a beautiful one in a dress.

She smelled like my mother.

She'd kiss me whenever I wanted.

And she cried when I was sad.

I even ran for mayor once a few years ago.

It wasn't my idea.

If it was up to me, I'd just tell everybody to go fuck themselves.

But this gang of politicians insisted I was relatable before they filled me full of drugs and forced me onto their campaign.

He was in my cabinet.

The angle was, I knew the streets, so who better to clean them up?

I apparently was in the lead because the other guy had a hair lip and I told it like it was.

But then the opposition invited me to this sort of debutante dinner party where I was framed for fingering a bunch of animals.

The smear campaign was too much for my wife and she blew herself up at a press conference.

Who the fuck's there, huh?

Oh, what, is this the part where you all jump out?

Is that your big fucking plan?

Fuck you, fuck you, bastard, you're dead.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, bastard!

I still have a list of my policies for if I did or ever do win mayor.

I'd start by tearing down every fucking billboard in the country.

And the ones that are left standing would say horrible, horrible shit that would just make you puke.

Then I'd shut down every TV station, make everyone live in the forest, and every CEO of every corporate shithouse would have to cut their heads off in front of everyone.

And we'd still have a long fucking way to go.

I mean, look around.

And you think it's normal because it's all you ever see, but TV didn't exist a hundred years ago.

Condoms didn't exist a hundred years ago.

The fucking smartphone didn't exist a hundred years ago.

But you just dive right in, nose first into the muck, and hide behind your stupid ignorance as an excuse for abandoning nature and abandoning God.

And if you think I'm an asshole, just flip open to any fucking page of the Bible.

Then look up at the squalor you're boiling in and you fucking tell me we're not living in Rome.

And don't get me started on those fucking handheld idiot boxes.

You're all walking around like a bunch of sleepwalking morons with your faces in your phones and your phones down here.

So really what you're looking at is the ground, man.

They got you living your entire life staring into this little mirror where you just marvel at your own drooling reflection and your ego bathes in itself and your whole fucking life goes by in a meaningless blip.

And even that blip is shorter now and it's because of that fucking phone.

Because it's pumping toxic waves of DNA-mutating crap into your body and filling your prostate and your tits and your brains with cancer.

And it's doing it at all times around the fucking clock, even while you're asleep.

And why?

So you can delete your fucking email.

And don't even get me started on AIDS.

When I was ten, my uncle came to live with us to sleep on the couch and hide from some pursuers he wasn't allowed to talk about.

One night he was ranting about how some spooks had replaced his normal hair with electronic recording strands.

But when he tried to burn the strands out of his head, his whole body caught fire and spread to the house immediately since he'd riddled the place with flammable booby traps.

My parents were sleeping upstairs and died in the blaze.

I was sleeping in my treehouse that night, which was right outside their window, so I was at the perfect angle to hear the screams.

I'd earlier been diagnosed with the same disorder as my uncle, but my prescription burned up in the fire, so I forget.

I remember the pills were yellow, and while they did lower the volume of everyone shouting, they would also turn your teeth black and make your dreams tell you to break things.

You know what Freud says about the nature of horror?

He says it's when the home becomes unhomelike, unheimlich.

And that's what this place has become.

This whole fucking time and country and everything else, it's unheimlich.

And I want my life to mean something.

I want to change things around and make something beautiful out of all this shit.

Even now when I sleep, I have dreams that would make you cry.

Big, colorful dreams where...

That's my daughter.