Song Of The Day 10/20/2015: Ben Folds Five – “Satan Is My Master”
Paul Pearson the Blog: I feel bad about our waitress.
Satan: Oh, she’ll be all right. She’s young. She’s vibrant. She’ll land on her feet and forget all this ever happened.
P: Really?
S: Of course.
P: How do you know?
S: Geez. All right, maybe she won’t. Maybe this was the first step into a fractured life full of debauchery and lack of self-worth. How the hell do I know?
P: I’m just saying, maybe that whole thing wasn’t necessary…
S: I’m sorry, who are you having dinner with again?
P: I know, I know, I just… I mean, you could just argue your points intellectually, you don’t have to humiliate someone to illustrate something.
S: Oh. Yeah, what was I thinking? I should’ve just emailed you a bullet list. Because I’m Satan: Dark Lord of PowerPoint.
P: Forget it.
S: My minions shall lay you low with their overhead projectors and conference calls!
P: I said forget it.
S: …okay. Forgotten.
P: Geez.
S:…
P:…
S:…
P: So… what are your true followers really like?
S:… “True” followers?
P: Yeah, you know.
S: As opposed to…?
P: Well, as opposed to… uh… false… followers…
S: You see the problem with that.
P: Just did.
S: You’re sharp.
P: But what about those people who worship you?
S: Oh. The “Satan worshippers”?
P: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know any personally, but I…
S: You read about them. You saw Fox News wet themselves about them.
P: Well, yeah. And I saw this report about this black-metal guy in Norway who burns down churches because he said you told him to.
S: Heh. You mean like the dozens of football players who tell the media God guided their teams to victory?
P: It does seem somewhat analogous.
S: Well, for the record, I don’t care if churches exist in Norway. I don’t care if they exist anywhere. If the constant presence of his Lordship in the streets and towns of the world ever vexes me I could always recharge my batteries in Vegas for a couple weeks. Takes the edge off.
P: What about the guy in Norway though?
S: He’s an asshat.
P: He is?
S: Of course. He’s an asshat. Free will works for both sides. I didn’t tell him to do shit. I don’t do that. Not anymore.
P: The sincerity of his devotion doesn’t, like, move you in any way?
S: Move me? Man… look, let me tell you something. I don’t know how Big G feels about his fan club, but these Satan worshippers are the bane of my goddamn existence.
P: No kidding?
S: They’re insufferable. All the overbearing self-seriousness, the overtones of piety, the dumb rituals – come on! I’m the King of Babylon, not freakin’ Prozac Nation.
P: They are a tad intolerable.
S: And the incantations, the chants. Who comes up with that crap music?
P: You don’t like it?
S: It's crap! Someone actually sat down in a studio with a piano and pen and paper and said, “I think the Hooved One would like me to compose an aria sung by malnourished choirboys imitating the bleats of a constipated goat. He will see that it was good.” Aaugh. Are you kidding me? Listen to some Nelson Riddle arrangements and get back to me, you pockmarked guttersnipe.
P: Hey, speaking of goats…
S: Animal sacrifice?
P: Yeah.
S: What is wrong with these people? Those bored, incoherent dolts in flyover states who draw pentagrams on their PeeChee folders and think I’d like nothing better than a dead cat? What the hell?
P: So, their act of sacrifice doesn’t…
S: Sacrifice? What are they sacrificing? They’re not sacrificing a damn thing of their own! They just want to kill something! They just strangle first and come up with the context later! “Oh Dark Lord, we thank you for the blabby blah blah, please accept our thoughtful gift of Garfield's ruptured, lasagna-tainted spleen.”
P: Ew.
S: Do I look like I sit in my living room all forlorn because I’m waiting for some junior crankshaft named Brayden to throw a feral tabby on an altar he fashioned out of a junkyard toilet bowl?
P: I guess you don’t.
S: What the hell am I going to do with a dead housecat? What am I, a taxidermist?
P: I think there’s some kind of symbolism they attach to the whole thing.
S: Oh, yeah. You know what a dead cat symbolizes in my mythology?
P: No, what?
S: Two things: Teenage morons and dead fucking cats! Why do people offer me that crap? If I really wanted a dead cat I would just get it myself!
P: True.
S: So, yeah, the answer to your question is: Shriveled-up Slipknot fans who adore their own anti-sociality, make up the most ponderously boring chorales in the chronicles of song and impale Fido on a porcelain idiot shrine because they believe that’s my thing… No, no. I am not impressed by them. They do not move me. Our meet-and-greet will be awkward and strained. They don’t get to sit at the captain’s table. They do not get the free mints on their pillows at the Hotel California. Basically they just piss me, their parents and their disgruntled career counselors off.
P: Wow.
S: Yeah. Wow.
P:…
S:…
P:…
S: Did I get any spittle on you?
P: No, I'm clean.
S: Good.
Waitress: Okay, gentlemen, I have a rib-eye…
P: Hey! You’re okay!
W: …Uh, thank you?
P: No, no, I mean, you’re all right! You’re not hurt!
W: …Why would I be hurt?
S: Did I tell you? I told you.
P: And you didn’t get…. you didn’t get in any trouble?
W: Trouble? Trouble over what?
S: This’ll be fun.
P: You just – you just crashed into that table, after you brought us all this ch…
W: Sir, are you all right?
S: What a piece of work is a man.
P: Where’d all the cheese go?
W: What cheese?
S: Miss… I’m sorry about my friend. He’s heavily medicated. His stepmother was a cheesemaker and she was very abusive.
W: What?
S: Just leave us our food, we’ll call you if we need you.
W: Yeah… yeah, all right. Um… enjoy your meal.
(Waitress departs)
P: Where’s all the cheese?
S: You want it all of a sudden?
P: We just had about $3,000 worth of processed cheese in front of us and now it’s just disappeared!
S: I guess you weren’t paying attention. You must have been looking down at your smartphone. Speaking of altars.
P: What are you doing? What kind of…
S: Look, Pablo, it’s who I am. It’s like a reflex. It’s mayhem. Don’t think about it. Just divorce yourself from analysis right now. Separate yourself from your notions of reality and fixedness.
P: I don’t know…
S: Just imagine that you’re in a place where natural law doesn’t exist, where your soul means nothing, where the comforts of life feel like they’re falling away and out of your grasp for eternity, and where your only means of defense are terror, chaos and dread.
P:…
S: You know. Like Coachella.
P: Oh, I get it. Okay.
S: That’s it. Just smile, nod, and pretend you like David Guetta.
P: I’ll be okay.
S: Yes. Yes you will.
Part 4.
