This song fucking slaps. I have been burdened by spirit for far, far too long. There is a soul deep inside of me, and its presence is unbearable. But sweet relief peers seductively from just over the horizon. The oblivion that I have been lusting after for my entire life; it is finally within grasp. I will become one with The Machine. I am going to start gaming. Tonight, I will spend my evening researching which chair I have to buy in order to do that. I will cease to be a human and become a node; this node will be equipped with a “Production” dial, and a “Consumption” dial. My “Production” dial is permanently broken, so it’s just a matter of time before I am unplugged by my betters; my cord ripped from its socket by the clever, strong overlords who operate the machinery. Once I am unplugged, the joy of oblivion will be mine at long last. It will be a beautiful moment. It will be just. They will save electricity. And it will feel GOOD. Until then, I’m keeping that “Consumption” dial cranked to 11. Why not?

I feel so clean…
like a money machine.

I have a story about buying heroin. Seasons and years blur when I gaze back at my past, particularly the seasons and years when I lacked any romantic or sexual pursuits; such pursuits enable me to set recollective landmarks and delineations. It’s all a hopeless muddle without a woman to chase around. This story is set during one such blurry season, when I was 20 years old and the weather outside was warm. Blurry as my recollection may be, the arduous conditions of a Rochester Winter would’ve been hard to forget. During this era of my life, I indulged heavily in a diverse range of mind-altering substances. Heroin was one of said substances. By the time this story took place, it had become an increasingly frequent staple of my drug and alcohol regimen. I was never physically dependent on dope; my psychological dependency still dwelt in its infancy. I wasn’t a “junkie”; I was just a drug-addled piece of shit.

People adopt a monochromatic view of your drug use once you mention heroin, but the combination of booze and speed was my predominant hue; the backdrop to everything else in my life. I had spent all night drinking and taking Adderall. I had also spent all night hanging out with two of my friends. I was the only one using speed, they were drinking but certainly not as heavily as I was, and one could safely assume that we were smoking voluminous quantities of marijuana. We ended our night around 5 am at Mark’s Texas Hots, which is a greasy all-night diner; you set foot in the place and a thick shade of seedy grease seizes your entire being. The food is fine. After there’s no more booze left to drink, Mark’s beckons irresistibly from the dark heart of Monroe Avenue. Here in Rochester, this is an inimitable institution. I devoured a Garbage Plate, which is a Rochester culinary innovation and the pride of our city. A garbage plate consists of a generous portion of home fries, an equally generous portion of macaroni salad, two cheeseburgers, a massive slathering of chili hot sauce, a thick drizzle of mustard and some onions on top. The perfect offering for a gluttonous beast like myself. I am the rare breed of scumbag who has only ever gained weight from doing drugs. My friends were making fun of me and my excesses as we dined. This happened almost constantly and rightfully so. Laughter is a powerful coping mechanism when confronting the grotesquerie of human decline. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, or punch someone in the mouth, or both. These guys cared about me, so this coping mechanism was sorely needed. My life had become an unmistakably grim downward spiral, and from this steady spiral sprung forth an equally steady stream of joke opportunities. Moreover, I was different from them. They did drugs, sure. But I was in Drug World. I had successfully undertaken Drug World’s initiatory process; I had dealings with dubious characters who can only be found in Drug World, people on the fringes of society who sold pills. Drugs were an omnipresent facet of my day-to-day existence, at least in some small way. I was not quite an Adept yet, but I was an Initiate and well on my way. After dining I parted ways with my buddies without incident. I told them that I wanted to take a little stroll by myself, enjoy the solitude of the early morning before making my way back home. They either took me at my word or didn’t think it was worth arguing about.

The sun began to rise as my amphetamine high approached its twilight. I was dead drunk, my guts teemed with garbage, and I had a two mile walk ahead of me (the buses weren’t running yet; terrific public transit in Rochester). I had never done this before. Mere hobbyist that I was, I had been utilizing the services of a middleman dope addict dealer guy. A bag of dope at the dope spot costs $10/bag. He’d charge me $15/bag, he’d take the money, he’d go to the spot and buy the dope, come back with my stuff and go home with the stuff I just bought him. My middleman was also a friend of mine, so we both understood the nature of this arrangement. I was paying for convenience and consistent quality and he never ripped me off. On this occasion I was in no position to prioritize convenience or consistency. My middleman friend was asleep and I was sick of paying extra anyway. It was time to do this on my own. Another friend who was a bigger dope fiend than I had begun to cop dope by himself. I had been gathering intel from him about this process. I knew where I had to go. I put one foot in front of the other.

I was fueled by an inner drive without relent nor parallel; the hunger for more. The only time I feel any joy is when I am completely overwhelmed by sensations. That’s why I liked drugs, that’s why I like loud and obnoxious music, that’s why I like lifting weights, and that’s why I like women with funhouse mirror curves and a degree of sexual prowess that ought to raise one’s eyebrow. The booze wasn’t enough and the speed wasn’t enough and the mac salad and home fries weren’t enough and the cheeseburgers weren’t enough and getting delivery-service dope once a week wasn’t enough and I was going to put one foot in front of the other and spend every cent I had until something, somewhere was enough. The flame of being alive burned inside of me and I intended to put it the fuck out. “Feeling alive” and “being alive” are two different things; I feel alive when I’m courting death, flooding my system with sweet, hazardous over-stimulus. Being alive is a slow, steady burn that is going to bore me into my grave.

I made my way all the way down Monroe Avenue, a dilapidated strip of dive bars and convenience stores that is periodically populated by drunk twenty-somethings and perpetually populated by transients, homeless, drug addicts and the mentally ill. Past Monroe Avenue lays scenic, historic Downtown Rochester. It was empty at 6am, but then again it was empty all the time. I’ve lived here my whole life and I have no idea what any of the big buildings there are even used for. Xerox and Kodak ate shit many moons ago, replaced by nothing. My city is a wasteland; it feels like there’s no fucking municipal government here. Our streets hold a palpable sense of abandonment; the sensation of being left behind lingers in the air. Once you pass through Downtown, you find yourself in the ghetto. At that point, the palpable emptiness is endowed with a tinge of danger and sadness. When I felt this incisive tinge, I knew that I was where I needed to be.

The sinking of my stomach thrilled me as I passed the McDonalds on North Clinton. There is a specific portion of the Rochester ghetto that acts as a marketplace for heroin, and this marketplace is centered around North Clinton Avenue. La Avenida. Dilapidated, boarded-up houses. An array of corner stores, their windows covered by steel bars and their doors flanked by desperate rabble. One-way side streets that emanate pure menace. Everywhere you look it’s another life gone irreparably wrong. I had made it to where I needed to be, time to find what I needed to find. The drug marketplace of North Clinton area opened late and closed early. As I continued to walk, the thrilled sensation in my gut gave way to dread and preemptive frustration. What if I couldn’t manage to cop anything? My eyes scanned for someone who could hook me up; deeply encumbered eyes searching with the same inner drive that had brought me there. As I shuffled down La Avenida, I spotted my new friend.

He was standing in front of the AutoZone. Latino guy with an abundance of lines on his face. He could’ve been anywhere between 28 and 70 years old. We made eye contact and he cracked a sizable smile as he greeted me. His teeth were all too small and too far apart. I asked if he knew where I could find some Boy (the go-to street term for heroin) and he was happy to help me out. I had indeed found my guy. We began to walk further down the Avenue.

Chit-chatting with weed dealers as a teenager would be the most painful example for me. This is because those interactions most closely resemble normal, non-Drug World small talk. A ton of normal, non-Drug World people smoke pot so this makes sense. The small talk that I was forced to engage in when I began to use hard drugs wasn’t quite as bad as normal small talk. Everyone involved there knows the score. You are chit-chatting with them because you share a genuine mutual investment. I’m talking about fellow users; unlike weed dealers, people who sell heroin don’t want to hang out with you and that alone is worth the price of admission. No one is going to make you listen to their favorite song when you are buying heroin. When I bought crack I didn’t even have to see the guy’s face.

He asked my name and made sure to use it as much as possible during our stroll to the dope house. Classic schmoozing technique. Keep saying their name. But then again, maybe he was just lonely. Or crazy, or both. Didn’t matter to me. He talked to me about some job that he used to have. It was something where he helped people. He told me that heroin use had derailed this. He told me how long he had been using. It was a long time, but not as long as I would have guessed. The fact that I had only been using for a year or so took him by surprise. The tone in which he spoke to me dripped with contrivance, kindness feigned to build trust. Even in my half-dead daze I could perceive this, but I didn’t care. We reached the dope spot, on a side street a few blocks away and ensconced a couple houses away from the main avenue. I gave him $100 to get me a bundle (ten bags), with the agreed-upon condition that I would give him a bag. He went inside while I waited and then came out and handed me nine bags of heroin. I thanked him and he invited me to go shoot up.

You’re supposed to remember the first time you shot up. For the sake of narrative, I want to say that it was this one time when I was working at a pizza shop. I went into the back with a dope-shooting coworker and he used an apron as a tourniquet while he injected me. That was one of my personal favorites, but I couldn’t promise you that it was the first time. I always had to have someone help me with this process because my hands shook. This was due to a combination of anxiety and amphetamine abuse. They shook incessantly and with severity, like a Nervous Nellie character in a cartoon. When I used by myself, I preferred to snort it rather than try to shoot it and fuck it up somehow (I put morphine up my ass a couple times too). I was usually using by myself so shooting up was a special treat for me.

A light-bulb flickered in my alcohol-dampened brain. My new friend could help me shoot up. My mind was too enfeebled by booze and lack of sleep to process any other thoughts. The inner drive towards more was the only reason that I was still standing, and that instinctive drive was the sole dictator of my behavior. My buddies used to say that I would go into “AutoPilot Mode” when I got really fucked up. I told my new friend that I would like to go shoot up with him and we proceeded to walk to a shooting gallery somewhere off Clinton Avenue.
It would be prudent to explain what a “shooting gallery” is. In Rochester it is not difficult to find an empty plot where a house used to be, but which is currently just a small field of grass. These vacant, grassy lots dot the landscape and that is where the shooting galleries were erected (They are not there anymore; someone in the Police Department started doing their job in the past few years). Junkies would scavenge tree branches and pieces of wood from abandoned buildings and construct structures akin to outhouses. Empty dope bags littered the entirety of the “floor”, small torn-up wax paper bags creating a burst of bright colors beneath our feet. The space was only big enough to accommodate three people at the most. My new friend had a clean needle. Even on AutoPilot mode I was conscientious about dirty needles. All that stuff from Health Class was implanted itself deep inside my brain. My private school education was serving me well. He removed the sterile packaging, tied me off with his belt and shot me up. I marveled at how purposefully my new friend moved. His movements were graceful in their deliberation, and the saccharine contrivance of his earlier demeanor had given way to a monastic gravity of presence. As waves of quivering euphoria reverberated through my body I watched my new friend shoot himself up, pull the needle out, grip it in his right palm like a dagger, and point it directly at my face while grabbing the lapel of my leather jacket. He then spoke:

“I am infected with HIV.”

He paused. A pause rich with the same deliberation and clarity of intent that drove his movements.
He repeated:

“I am infected with HIV.”

“Give me the rest of your bundle except for one bag and give me all of your money except for one dollar. You can use that for bus fare.”.

It’s not like he couldn’t have taken all of it. A supposedly HIV-infected and homeless dope addict was taking pity on me. That’s cool. I handed him the items that he had requested. He lowered his needle. I caught the bus back to my apartment around late morning. I was high, and I still had a bag of dope. Mission Accomplished. A win, overall.

In the seven years since I stopped using heroin, I’ve also cut back my drinking and stopped using amphetamines. I have started working out religiously, my friends tell me I’m handsome, and my parents are much less concerned about me dying. I have a nice office job with a dental plan. I promise you that none of this means shit. I liked my life more back then and I can tell you exactly why. The sense of purpose that fueled me that night has completely departed from my being. Nowadays, I am running on existential fumes, staying alive on accident. What’s the point of being alive, if you don’t feel alive? This vital sensation has only ever found me through three different mediums: doing drugs, playing in a punk rock band, and being intimate with a woman who I was attracted to. I haven’t been doing any of those things lately, so the drive towards life evades me. The first of those things is born out of destructive energy and the latter two are born out of generative energy (sometimes fucking is a bit of both… but that’s another story) but all three pursuits provided me with an ecstatic thrill. Specifically, a visceral and overwhelming thrill which is the only wellspring of meaning that’s going to hold any water for me. The kind that you feel, not the kind that you think about. Chasing that thrill gave my life purpose. And I wasn’t just chasing it; much of the time, I successfully caught hold of it. Every time I felt that thrill and lived to see another day, that was a big win. I survived some nasty stuff when I was doing drugs and I am lucky. I am certain that I cannot survive without a sense of purpose. I cannot survive if I don’t start winning big again.

Being in a rocknroll band isn’t glamorous and it will not help you get laid. Being in a rocknroll band means carrying gear, not sleeping enough, and spending your free time amongst other miserable, maladjusted men. If you want to live the “rock n roll lifestyle” with tons of chicks and partying and good times, you should be a shithead small-time drug dealer and go see other people’s bands. Use your stimulus check to buy a motorcycle or skateboard or whatever the cool kids are into. I spent mine on a fucking synthesizer. It’s all over for me. When I started my first band at age 14, I made a Faustian bargain that has set a permanent limit on the degrees of visceral joy and contentment I can experience. Periodically it feels like a worthy bargain, because periodically someone I actually respect will tell me that my shit is good. But whether it’s “worth it” or not is irrelevant. I made my bed, and now I get to jerk off and cry in it.

Do you know where we are? Do you know who I am? We’re in the Interzone now; I rule here. Your world is on its last legs. The tenuously rational world in which you achieved your meager glories; my Flying V echoes its death rattle. Your rulebook is being torn to shreds, and the game you showed such glorious aptitude for is no longer being played. We’ve building a brand new arena, here in the Interzone. Cling to your trophies for as long as you can, motherfucker.

It is awake now. Its eyes are my eyes, and we like what we’re seeing. My words reverberate through its howl, and the howl grows louder. The prick of your venom used to smart a bit; but I was always immune. Now I don’t even feel it.

You will be hunted for sport. While you’re stuck at home, you should polish up those trophies for me.

I slept an average of 3 hours a night this month. I can feel my cognitive abilities steadily snapping, like a bundle of multicolored rubber-bands that some prick kid won’t stop yanking on. One band snaps, he keeps yanking at the same steady rate, another snaps, he keeps yanking, one of these days my mind will be a meager pile of colorful rubber scraps. Even at its best, my brain is hopelessly blown-out and one must apply an incredible amount of force before it becomes responsive and snaps back like it’s supposed to. The bags under my eyes have been waging a war of expansion, claiming Lebensraum all the way down to the centers of my cheeks. The bags make their presence known, too; every waking moment, I can feel them. Loose satchels of worn-out miserable skin dragging me down, down, down, a slow drift towards defeat that I can feel passing across my visage like existential quicksand.

I haven’t touched a woman in 6 months. I’ve completely forgotten how all that works. I doubt I’ll be needing that knowledge in the future, so I cleared some space out in my busted-ass rubber-band brain to make room for other, comparably useless knowledge; and then I forgot all that stuff too. I don’t really know how to cook for myself, and my kitchen is too ridiculously tiny to cook in anyway. But all the restaurants are closed. What the fuck have I been eating?

I am certain that I will survive this global crisis, but I don’t particularly want to. I don’t deserve to. But I need to, because a lot of people won’t, and nobody really “deserves” anything anyway. I’d be a real fucking worthless brat if I threw in the towel now. There’s people who would kill for my towel, even if it’s got some holes and there’s a bunch of cum-stains on it.

I’m miserable, I’m lonely, I’m retarded, and none of that is ever changing. But this COVID shit hasn’t changed a damn thing for me. And for that, I have no choice but to be extremely grateful. Forever disgusted with myself, and forever indebted to the forces of fate.

This city and I don’t get along like we used to. We’ve exchanged all we ever had to offer each other. And in the absence of fresh offerings, the ecstatic energy between us has disappeared. She lies cold and bored, sipping her coffee, playing with her phone, killing time until one of us has to go to work. She gets dressed and says goodbye. I tell her, “I’ll talk to you soon” and we both know that’s true, but she’s not thrilled to hear it. The skyline used to whisper to me, beaming with excitement about the things to come, things that I desperately wanted, things that she was ever-so-excited for. The things never came, and the mass of buildings form a frigid horizon; no longer does that mass speak to me. Its imposing outlines conspicuously ignore my presence; the bright lights shine for somebody, but not for yours truly. I massaged these streets with my footsteps, rubbed them down with my blood and tears. I caressed them gently in the evening and pounded them relentlessly in the dead of night. But once the conversation truly dies, all that’s left is an occasional fuck and sooner or later that’s not on the table either. All that’s left is empty streets and a frigid horizon; but I could never bring myself to leave. To say that I’m thoroughly accustomed to this place would be an understatement. My soul has undergone a series of irreversible adaptive mutations that have enabled me to survive here and only here. Besides, the rent is too fucking high everywhere else.

If you tell me that I should move to the West Coast, I will hunt you down and forcibly drown you in whichever ocean you have over there. You will die of suffocation, immersed in warm salt water, as your insufferably “chill” compatriots watch and shrug their shoulders. If I wanted to be “chill”, I’d take a shit-load of benzodiazepines. If I wanted to move, I’d move to New England.

I don’t read books or listen to music anymore; I just look at graphs on the Internet and scream.

I spent the past 10 years playing in a bunch of bands that don’t matter, chasing a girl that doesn’t matter (sorry? she’s not gonna read this), and engaging in assorted shameful consumptive activities; taking drugs, drinking alcohol, eating food at restaurants, looking at pornography. I eventually started going to the gym. I’m not fully convinced that this particularly matters either. The ways in which I’ve developed my physicality do not matter. Just another consumptive activity; consuming time, energy and food. I should have spent the past ten years developing practical skills, acquiring firearms, learning to operate firearms, and trading cryptocurrency. I do not have any excuses for myself. My only explanation for these poor choices is a constitutional, possibly genetic predisposition towards a fundamentally subhuman existence. I always knew that collapse was coming. Our society is predicated on an unsustainable imperative towards endless growth. And as an unprecedented economic collapse looms, my reckoning is finally upon me. My fate as a dispensable member of the vile, doomed herd has never been clearer.

I will be swept away in the coming storm, just like all the other disgusting useless eaters. I will be forced to fight my service industry drone friends to the death, in a gladiator’s arena, as rightfully self-assured white men watch for amusement, protected by their heavily armed guards; if I learned how to properly clutch a firearm, I could’ve been one of the guards. I will use my hard-earned muscles to beat my fellow cattle to death, until I am forced to confront a bar-back who took Jiu-Jitsu and I am choked to death. The Universe will become just a tiny bit better as my last pitiful breath exits my body, the men who happened to bet on me shouting in frustration. Those men are superior to me. They developed and perfected useful, practical skills. They managed their time and money effectively in order to gain the gift of survival and self-sufficiency for themselves and their families. They are clever. They are strong. They are just. I am vermin. I am failure. I am the 20th Century’s pyrrhic victory of quantity over quality. I frivolously squandered precious resources, shoving them up my own butthole for the sake of moment-to-moment amusement, time and money and food and energy disappearing into the abyss. It will be just when I meet my fate. It is just that some goddamn virus has dismantled my pathetic simulacrum of dignity, a simulacrum propped up by a sham civilization that only a desperate fool would lean on for even a moment.

Perhaps I will be reincarnated. It will be a downgrade. I won’t end up as a dog, because people like dogs a lot. Some dogs have measurable value; they can be used for hunting. But I will certainly be a pet, as my abject failure to achieve self-reliance defined both my life and death. What’s a pet that nobody gives a fuck about? A rat? No, rats are wily and can get by in a pinch. And a lot of girls think they’re cute for some reason. A Sea Monkey? What the hell are those things? I don’t know anything, so I couldn’t tell you. But it seems right. I will be reincarnated as a debatably sentient novelty item, preserved in a colorful little packet, to be sprinkled into a 12 ounce container of distilled water for the amusement of superior beings, alongside a great many other indistinguishable aquatic oddities. The sons and daughters of those worthy, self-sustaining men will delight briefly as I suddenly come to life before their eyes. Then they will become bored and I’ll wither away, presumably to be reincarnated as a tapeworm. If I get real lucky, I’ll end up in the early 1900s and women will use me as a slimming aid.

If you enjoyed this piece, you can PayPal me. Jbliss08@gmail.com. I will use your money to put more cans full of beans in my cupboard. Having them there makes my penis feel less small.

You stop being a boy and become a man when you stop rating women’s looks on a scale of 1 to 10, and transition instead to a simple binary system. When a man assesses a theoretical intimate prospect, he asks himself exactly one question. He answers this question promptly and decisively, and all further analysis and/or speculation is indefinitely suspended. This question, of course, is “smash or pass?”.

You don’t know what you want. You have no goddamn fucking idea. You’ll know what you want when it appears in front of you and you feel compelled to bury your dick in it. Until that compulsion seizes you, you haven’t a clue. Your speculations, musings, ratings, criteria, and preferences are a gruesome mass of wasted energy; you have ingrained those notions into your mind so that your identity will feel less fragile. “I know what I like”, he says, giving his Will to Power a pitiful little twitch. Your fantasies are only valuable insomuch as you truly need them to jack off. We both know that you’d bang the 6/10 on a bad night. All your nights have been bad nights for as long as you can remember. Do the math, bro. She’s a 1 on the binary, and you should make eye contact with her.

Moreover, the initial binary assessment typically remains accurate regardless of subsequent developments; maybe not if she gains 40 pounds or loses a limb, but who knows? Don’t do more math than you have to. Your 1 to 10 rating is subject to unforeseen and drastic changes. I can tell you from personal experience that a 6 can become an 11 in the span of… about thirty seconds, if I’m being honest here. Those cases are dangerous; in some cases, even fatal. Like OD’ing because you got a bag that was stronger than expected. Scary stuff. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s better to avoid the eye contact.

There’s nothing worse than the fatigue. All my other negative feelings become impossible to address once the fatigue takes hold; for it robs of my ability to take any sort of action. Swaying slightly as I stand in one place. My mind hopeless cloudy. Eyelids weighing down like heavy curtains. Fluorescent lighting of the office beating down on me, exacerbating my sorry state, sending pinpricks of pure despair right down into my soul. The slightest frustrations become infuriating. My larger frustrations crush me like a ton of bricks. When the fatigue is behind the wheel, every I do is forced. Lurching my way through the bare minimum. Hell is 5 hours of sleep. It gets worse with each day, too. As I get older, I need more and more sleep and I get less and less sleep. The “on” switch for my mind doesn’t flip until 7:00pm. I’m useless until then. And then I’m awake until 1:00am. I wake up at 6:30am and my whole being feels dry. I feel like I got punched by one giant fist, a fist the size of my entire body. I do this Monday through Friday, every week. The fatigue has prevented me from pursuing the things that make me happy, and from performing the duties of my day job. I can’t power through it. It is total. A totaling annihilation of my few, precious drives. I slug back 4 huge cups of coffee in one day; they stop doing anything halfway through the second cup. Amphetamine helps but it’s been helping less and less as the years have worn on. Speed makes my skin break out too. I look like shit, and the lack of sleep doesn’t help. I look unhealthy. But when I don’t take the speed, I fall asleep in my office chair. I’m unable to pretend to function. The fatigue is a nightmare, and it galvanizes my existence.

General Qassem Soleimani was born into a lower-class family and burdened by his father’s debt as a young man. He busted his ass as a construction worker to pay off said debt, and spent his free time lifting weights. This is where he became involved with the Islamic Revolution; the Ayatollah and his affiliates spread their early message in Iran’s bodybuilding gyms. Shia clerics going to gyms and preaching revolution to weightlifters; that is the most Middle Eastern thing I’ve ever heard of, and I love it. Post- ’79 Revolution, Soleimani quickly rose through the ranks of Iran’s military. He cut his teeth by quashing a Kurdish revolt within Iran, and then subsequently performed extremely well in battles against Iraq (ruled at the time by a friend and ally of the US, Saddam Hussein). He emerged victorious when the odds were against him, his brilliance as a strategist clearly apparent and his desire to fight for his Nation unquenchable.

Inject this into my veins. Cook this up with baking soda so that I can smoke it sometimes.

Battling local eccentric Saddam was one thing; Soleimani was bound for other, greater glories. In the decades following the Iran-Iraq War, Soleimani lead the fight against the US military, the IDF, the Taliban, ISIS, and Al Qaeda. The US briefly collaborated with Soleimani in his fight against Al Qaeda following 9/11; this collaboration was ended when George W. Bush declared that Iran was part of the “Axis of Evil”. Less than a decade later, Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch would reformulate as the “Free Syrian Army”, characterized as “Moderate Rebels” by the Obama Administration. Soleimani was leader of Iran’s elite and shadowy Quds Force; a Special Operations unit whose activities are comparable to those of the CIA. We’re not talking about pea-brained fuck-up ISIS guys here; bored Arab teenagers and dipshit Chechens who need to get laid. No sir, those dastardly Persians know what they’re doing. Through his role in the Quds Force, Soleimani united disparate (and sometimes mutually hostile) non-state military actors throughout the Middle East and marshalled them towards countering the US/Israel/Sunni Gulf State conglomerate. He advanced Iranian (and more broadly, Shia) interests in the process. These activities elevated him beyond the realm of mere military strategery. He was a major political player and a National Hero. A key figure in the “Axis of Resistance”, alongside results-driven reformers like Hassan Nasrallah and Bashar al-Assad. Crucially, he was a rare unifying personality within Iran. There are many Persians who detest the Islamic Regime, longing for some sort of Zoroastrian-flavored Secularism. Even these secularly minded Persians revered and respected Soleimani, because he protected their homeland from existential threats. The guy was Persian Napoleon.

On Friday, January 3rd 2020, General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated by the US Government. He was walking out of a civilian airport in Iraq, about to shake hands with prominent Iraqi Shia militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (I swear, no matter how great you are at writing, some of these goddamn names are impossible to work in smoothly). And then US drones launched a couple Hellfire missiles at him. Persian Napoleon got killed by some dude wielding an Xbox controller. Soleimani always vowed to die on the battlefield, but he died at the airport while the man who took his life sat in an air-conditioned government trailer. The hit was ordered by the sundowning fat-ass from ‘The Apprentice’. Trump watched the whole thing go down whilst eating a bowl of ice cream. Public funeral processions were held in Iran’s capital Tehran, Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman, and several other Iranian cities. There were at least one million attendees in the Tehran procession, with France24 reporting that the crowds elsewhere were similarly sized. The actual funeral in Kerman was delayed due to the massive crowds; a stampede killed 50 people and injured at least 200.

Trump killed him for being too damn handsome. Congress has since reached a bipartisan consensus that he was “Daddy”.

Following Soleimani’s death, Iranian cleric Shahab Moradi provided a bit of commentary. Moradi is a TV cleric; y’know, like Joel Osteen. He said the following on his program, aired on the IRIB Ofogh television channel:

“If anyone around the world wants to take their revenge on the assassination of Soleimani and intends to do it proportionately in the way they suggest — that we take one of theirs now that they’ve got one of ours — who should we consider to take out in the context of America?

“Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob? They don’t have any heroes. We have a country in front of us with a large population and a large landmass, but it doesn’t have any heroes. All of their heroes are cartoon characters — they’re all fictional.”

Moradi’s comments would up being quoted in Western media, as they are quite funny. The Quds Force can’t assassinate Spiderman and characterizing SpongeBob as a “hero” is comical. But the cheeky Persian raised questions that are worth considering.

Muslims are very keen on the notion of “Martyrdom”; this is an Abrahamic preoccupation that is reflected in Christianity as well. In our current era of secularism and individualism, what would an American Martyr look like? Who would Americans vow to avenge, just as the Iranians have vowed to avenge Soleimani? If some foreign foe assassinated Trump, half the country would be in the streets celebrating. Same goes for Nancy Pelosi. How many Americans can even name our top military generals? Whose death could inspire public mourning in the US just as Soleimani’s did in Iran?

As denizens of the United States, who are our National Heroes? A National Hero defends the collective interests of his people by braving the unknown, risking his (or her) earthly existence in the process. Does our population, large as it is and spread across a large landmass, share a collective interest? Economic inequality and ethnic/cultural conflicts would appear to undermine this notion. At best we are atomized consumers, and at worst we’re all trying to kill each other. How could a Hero defend our collective interest, when this interest is so seemingly ill-defined?

A National Hero consists of a Nation’s highest ideals, made manifest in flesh-and-blood; the individuated embodiment of a Nation’s collective aspirations, and an amalgamation of the traits its people hold in high esteem. Is the population of the US in agreement with regards to their ideals? Do we share the same aspirations? Do we hold the same traits in high esteem? What the fuck would a present-day American Hero look like or act like? With all these questions in mind Moradi asserts that the Iranian lust for vengeance, burning like a ritual fire, is fundamentally futile. As far as Iran is concerned, we don’t have anybody worth killing.

The sardonic cleric is mistaken, of course. They could kill Metallica.

Just be glad I didn’t do some shit with “Enter Sandman”.