In this drive by, Thomas fearlessly disposes of SPIN magazine.

It's been a long time since I picked up an issue of  SPIN, as I stopped reading your oversized and colorful publication, which I  turned to only after the last air bubbles of Rolling Stones journalistic dignity disappeared beneath the waves of musical integrity, on the ultra-sad occasion of Michael O'Donoghue's death a few years back (brief pause here for a moment of silence. The man was, after all, a genius) 

I just want to know one thing. Who are these beautiful aliens on your pages, the ones with The Right Shoes, Million Dollar Smiles, and Tommy Pullmyfinger wardrobes which cling to their suntanned and androgynous hips? Where do they get off toting those carefree expressions, so bold and boasting, so proud and self complete? I look up and down the streets of my town, and nowhere do I see people who look anything like this. Who the fuck are these evil creatures, with one hand dipped deep in the bag of this weeks Socially Correct Brand of X-treme Snax while wearing a brand new pair of Electro-green Wu-Tang Brand rollabladz complete with Pentium III smart chip brakes? Do you grow these freaks in trees, on special farms whose locations are known only to the High Command and maybe Fabio (on account that he's such a freak himself)? 

I'll bet you farm them in a secret moonlight ceremony, and teach them how to smile and hold the products you place in their hand, then make them sleep in name brand cages. (Do they fight harder over the Nike cage, or the Adidas one?) Why is it that the driving force behind our speed obsessed society is barely old enough to drive, but we lavish them with expensive cars and fawn over their angsta-glossy likeness with the care usually reserved for infant photos in a strangers wallet? Death to models for a start, I say. Right after the lawyers. 

Every page of your once reputable magazine now screams out, "Buy this, buy that, shove this up your ass, consume this product, you are NOTHING without these shoes!." History no longer exists. It has become a media event. Some people say that the end is near. I say it happened a long time ago. I say History got in a huge fight with the future on a sea-faring episode of Road Rules, lost badly, fell overboard and washed up on shore where it lay whimpering for days without food or drinking water. I say it got hungry enough to brave society again, and it was cornered by a jabbering dog or a ghetto bird, and they found it naked, shivering and helpless with its back to the wall speaking in tongues about decency and respect for the past but the cops took no chances and unsnapped the safety on their holsters, and proceeded to beat ten types of crap out of it, just in case it got the crazy idea to fight for its very survival. 

Come on now, hear me out. So they took History away to a holding facility, called in a camera crew, got everything they could get from it and when it had out lived its usefulness they shot History in the head executioner style and now, we're just waiting for the body to cool so we can saw off small pieces of it, sample it, loop it, shrink wrap it and ship it into the waiting hands of the Right People, charge five bucks a head and set up an X-treme Keg. Some rebels my generation turned out to be. We'd buy goat shit in a box if Cindy Crawford made it hip.. 

It's not bad enough that we as a people, being forty percent of the world consume sixty percent of the food. Or that we travel abroad, we like to complain that we can't get a decent hamburger, and tell everyone how much better life is in America. Oh, no. Why stop there when we live in a world where you can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance, where people order double cheese burgers, a large fry and a diet coke? We leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and leave useless boxes of junk in the garage, we use answering machines to screen calls and then install call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place. Who needs all this shit? When the novelty wears off we throw it away (and when you throw something away, what does away really mean?) we wait anxiously for some overpaid jackass in a suit to come up with something else to sell us. The world has gotten so small, so close together now that we don't have enough time to digest our actions and plot our doomed future in a moment of relative peace and quiet. Everything is a reaction to our ego, to the male dominated society we live in, so laden and drenched with machismo and swagger. Everything has become a status symbol, everything is a must have. Everybody wants to know everyone else's business, as if we have some right to every moment of their lives. Why, just because we buy the albums, CD interviews, video concerts, t-shirts, toaster cozies and lunch boxes? I mean really? Who gives the ass of a rat if this weeks new media darling shat herself as a child, or if the Commander-in-chief, leader of the "free" world gets a little something special on the side? I, for one, sleep easier knowing the man with his finger on the button wears a smile on his face but I don't want to exchange a single precious second of my life so some other styro-puffed floozy in a three piece from-the-waist-up suit can tell me about the late breaking events? I don't give a damn. Honest. I am ashamed of us as a people. What would our ancestors say? Does anyone else remember the TV commercial of the crying Indian, when he spies the hillside covered in trash? We have, I believe, reached the end of our lease on this planet, and I for one am happy about it. Do I think the world will end in 2000? You betcha. Not by natural means but because the date itself exists, therein lies the excuse that people will riot and cause harm to themselves and their environment on the principal alone. They'll have some celebrity of the week standing there with the right look on holding a microphone while some coward is hissing at him off camera to get closer to the mouth of the beast and say something clever while he's at it. "This is live TV, you fool! Make the moment!" 

I think the world is going way too fast. We're running toward the light at the end of the tunnel with our eyes wide shut, and our arms flung out in an idiots' empty embrace. I want to be there when we run smack into the wall, and reel backwards with a look of shock and surprise plastered on your collective faces. And as you lie there, sprawled out on the concrete with little dollar signs, CD icons and bluebirds whistling around your heads and rubbish smeared into your expensive new clothes, I'm going to be the one who takes his index finger in a slow, treasured swipe across the bloodstained wall, licks the tip of his finger and says with a more than smug grin on his face, "Fear this, folks",  as the clock runs out on the human drama. It'll be the last thing you remember before BANG! A bright flash of light, and some wafting pieces of plastic. That will be the end of us all, and our self important nonsense. 

And so gang, when the shit hits the fan on the big day, when Mother Nature takes a little 'me' time out for herself to 'drop the kids off at the gene pool', remember that all the baggy brand name trousers, crooked hats, pagers, rope gold and fine motorcars won't mean a damn thing. It will all be the same color in HELL. Besides, if you don't have a life without these material possessions, what makes you think you have one with them? 

I wonder if Mother will be perusing a copy of SPIN? I hope she at least lights a match 

Thomas Mckenzie 

THOMAS did four years in the U.S. Navy as a bomb tech, living in Europe and having a total James Bond life as an informal ambassador of the U.S.; partying, traveling and drinking all over the globe. He has been writing since he was old enough to pick up a crayon. Besides PURR, his work is also published in MOO.