Pinkerton's Weblog

How To Be Drunk And Stupid

Some context: I was surfing around an online forum and spotted a thread where people were listing off people they went to school with who’d died. You’d think this would be touching – kind of a fitting remembrance, an online “His name was Robert Paulson” or something similar. But no, it was just gross details; I knew this fat girl who committed suicide; once I saw a kid get hit by a car and saw his guts, etcetera, voyeuristic jacking off on decades-old graves for people apparently too young or too poor to just rent Faces of Death and get it over with.

Anyway, my attempts to stall their conversation:

I once knew a girl in school who ate nothing but french fries. Every day in the cafeteria, she'd order five plates full of fries. We kept warning her that if she ate nothing but french fries, it would kill her, but she didn't listen. Then one day, while she muched on a fry, the scurvy she'd contracted cracked a tooth and it fell into her plate of fries. This fat kid next to her laughed so hard he shit his pants and died. When the coroner showed up, he refused to pronounce the kid dead, since he didn't want to touch him because of his shitty pants. So no one ever pronounced him dead, and he just rotted in the cafeteria. We ate around him. After the fry girl died from malnutrition we propped them up together and made it look like they were having sex.

* * *

One time this kid I knew challenged me to jump off the bridge that ran along the creek outside of town. "No way," I said. "That's dangerous. The creek's too shallow." To prove to me that the creek was safe, we went down that afternoon, and he got ready to dive in. "Please don't do this," I said, before spotting an out of control car speeding towards us, then diving into the dreek at the last minute while the car hit the kid full on. It turned out the creek was fine. All the corpses of stupid children stuck against the jagged rocks cushioned the blow.

* * *

I grew up with this kid who always carried this lunch box around with him. We always teased him about it, but secretly we all wanted to know what was in it. Finally one night on a Scout camping trip, my friends and I shared a tent with him, and so waited until midnight, then beat him to death with the lunch box. We opened it up the lunch box on his corpse. Inside the box were some Wayne Gretzky stickers.

* * *

I knew a fat girl in grade three once who was dead.

Write Your Own Linkin Park Single!

Since time immemorial, the greatest poets have attempted, and failed, to write lyrics as good as those of Linkin Park. Often they get very close, but at the last minute can't think of anything that rhymes with "sad" and give up. Looks like this is one mystery that humanity will never solve, right? Wrong! Read on, and within five minutes you'll be writing Linkin Park-worthy free verse that every angsty teen in a five block radius will want to carve into their forearm to prove that nobody understands them.

Writing Your Linkin Park Verse

First you’ll need to find yourself a pudgy guy who can’t rap, then force him to anyway. Possible rhyming combinations should include feel/real, you/too, living/unforgiving, mean/scream, and soul/bowl.

Lookin' Good, Boys!

Writing Your Linkin Park Chorus

Lyrical content for the chorus shouldn’t be your primary focus; instead, put all your energy into shrieking the lyrics until you hear a loud snap from your groin area. Possible “teen-focused” subject matter to go for here should be feeling ignored, feeling like you don’t belong, wanting to feel something “real”, and then just throw something in about your soul. This is key: have the bad rapper repeating everything you say in the background.

Barre Chords and Record Scratches

Have these.

Putting it All Together

Using these simple rules, you too can write your very own Linkin Park single, indistinguishable from actual Linkin Park singles! Observe:

Verse 1

Chubby Rapper
My hollow nothingness is consuming me
You don’t listen to me, I got something to be

Skinny Bald Screaming Guy (in background)
You don’t understand...

Chubby Rapper
I just need to feel, what’s inside is real
And I kneel when I feel that my soul is for real
My soul is inside where you can’t see it
But I see your deceit when I feel it for real, yeah

Chorus (remember to shriek)

Skinny Bald Screaming Guy
You’rrrrrrrrrrrrrre a parrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt of me
I can finnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnally seeeeeeeee

Chubby Rapper (in background)
He can fine-ally see…

Skinny Bald Screaming Guy
Why dooooo I lettttttt you talk down to meeeeeee...?

Chubby Rapper (in background)
Why does he let…?

Skinny Bald Screaming Guy
Now I can finally see
When you talk down to me
Me soul is real, and I want you to feel
When I kneel
can you feel
that I’m real
and a soul

[five minutes of drop-D barre chords, record scratching]