Originally posted at God Damn My Life
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Ever since the surprising failure of my cat beach, I'd always had a hankering to re-kindle my entrepreneurial candle.
I am not some puppet scheduled to work for the man until the day I die. And that-not the fact that I completely lack motivation or a remotely attractive skill set-is the reason I have never held a job for more than six months. For I am a man of enterprise!
So when my pal "Inbred" Ed came to my door one day, giddy as a schoolgirl, and laid out a new business proposition, I jumped. He'd found online that certain movie companies in the fifties tried releasing movies that smelled. You'd be sitting in the theater, and you'd smell whatever the characters on the screen were smelling. Isn't that genius?! It failed miserably, I guess because people in the fifties were dumb. Naturally, Inbred and I had to have our own Smell-o-theater at once!
Now I'll admit the idea sounded nuts. And if anyone else had explained this pie-in-the-sky vision to me, I would have said they were nuts. But Inbred was a very respected member of my neighborhood so I had good reason to think this just might work.
But how to get it bankrolled? Even those assholes at TCF Bank wouldn't loan me cash now, not after they so unreasonably demanded I pay them back for the cat beach loan. It's not my fault those cats reacted the way they did! And that dumb broad Ellen DeGeneres still hasn't called me to fix my life, though I've been constantly submitting my situation to her website. Why can't she ever call someone that really needs money for once?
Grrr... It's times like this I really wish I had a kid. That way I could score some cash by selling it to science or one of those human traffickers.
Inbred did enjoy high-level political and business connections, however. In fact, his aunt is an office assistant who works directly under the Alderman! That's virtually a wormhole into Mayor Daley's office! Perhaps she could line up some funding for us. But sadly, Inbred explained why it couldn't work. He had been on the outs with his aunt after he'd accidentally electrocuted her adopted son. I didn't see what the big deal was. It wasn't like the kid was her real son.
We couldn't just give up. Perhaps, we decided, a prototype of our Smell-o-theater could lure Inbred's aunt and some other investors. Build it, and they will come. People just needed to smell this bad boy in action.
Since I was still convinced Inbred was the smarter between us, I left the decision of our prototype movie and the smells that would accompany it to him. This all happened in winter and the season must have gotten to him, because a week later Inbred showed up to my place with a DVD of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
"That's it?" I asked him. "You just brought the DVD? How are you going to do the smells?"
"Uhhh, I got something planned," Inbred assured me. I shrugged and let him in. There were obviously reservations, but those subsided with the realization that Inbred was probably just too fast for me. He undoubtedly had dozens of smells ready, just packed up in some uber-efficient manner unrecognizable to my mortal brain. I sat back on my couch and prepared to experience Christmas Vacation as I'd never experienced it before.
And then nothing happened. Inbred just sat in my recliner and stared at me as the movie reeled on and on. There were no smells aside from that musk Inbred carried about him on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I started getting a little impatient around the half-hour mark. When looking at Inbred for any sign of something happening, I got a resolute nod from him as he pointed back to the TV.
A little bit later is when it finally happened. I was watching Randy Quaid's character empty out his motor home's septic into the sewer and screaming "Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!" when I smelled what was happening on the screen. For right then Inbred had crammed his dirty fingers into my nostrils. They'd been in his butt crack seconds before.
"Ah! JESUS, INBRED!"
"Isn't it neat?" he asked. "You can smell exactly what's happening on the screen!"
"Inbred, if we were to run a movie theater that did this, and even suppose we wanted a shit smell, do you really think it would be practical for us to stink-finger everyone in the theater?"
Inbred stood there looking grim. "Uh, hadn't really thought about that," he said sheepishly. "My cousin and I used to do this to each other and I kind of thought it was cool..."
"Well it's not cool!" I barked. "Get out and come back with some different ideas!"
Another week passed before Inbred returned. This time he had a sealed tupperware container and a DVD of Schindler's List. I was pretty dumbfounded on this one. When one thinks of Spielberg's harrowing tale of the German businessman and his deeds in the holocaust, the last thing that comes to mind is aromatic vibrancy. But still, seeing the tupperware was at least a good sign that I wouldn't be getting his poopy fingers crammed into my nose again.
I sat on the couch and Inbred set the tupperware down on the coffee table in front of me. Then the movie started. Schindler's List is one long damn movie and this time, I started getting antsier much sooner.
"Alright, c'mon, Inbred," I demanded after fifteen minutes of genocidal atrocity. "When are we going to start smelling stuff?"
"It's coming, it's coming," he assured me. He had a crazed, buzzed look in his eye I wasn't sure I liked. Again, the line between madness and genius is thin. But for the first time ever I was wondering which side Inbred was really on...
Another thirty minutes and still nothing. "Inbred, really!"
"It's coming!" he repeated. "Don't worry, it'll happen!"
"When?" I yelped. "Just because it's a longer movie doesn't mean you can wait longer to unleash our schtick. Now c'mon, when am I going to start smelling stuff, already?!"
Inbred had an awkward grin on his face as he leaned forward. "Righhhttt...."
That's when I looked back in the screen and was struck with horror: not by some inhuman crime at the hands of the Nazi's, but by the sight of the little boy jumping into the latrine. Oh no. It was no longer a secret what that tupperware contained.
"NOW!" Inbred screamed as he ripped the tubberware open. Two things happened within the space of a half-second. I heard a massive pop, and I noticed my entire living room was covered in stool. I was covered too, for that matter. And no, neither my living room nor myself were covered in human fecal matter before Inbred opened the tupperware, so those events are connected.
What had happened was this. Inbred had taken a dump in the tupperware and sealed it up a day before he came over. Without any ventilation, the methane had built up, turning that canister into a ticking time-bomb of shit. So of course, when the built-up methane finally collided with the air...
I was seriously becoming less impressed with Inbred.
"Well would'ya look at that," Inbred said breathlessly. "That worked out even better than I thought. Not only do you smell it, but being covered in it makes it seem as though you're actually the little boy in the outhouse!"
Inbred was so in awe of his technical achievement that he was completely oblivious to my mounting rage. He was really surprised, then, when I punched him in the nuts a couple of seconds later.
We started cleaning immediately but the smell was already unbearable. I tried airing out the place by opening the window, but the feces was digging into the paint on my walls, causing the smell to linger. And, you'll remember, it was Chicago winter. So now I was basically living in a freezing-cold sewer! Honestly, if you can't trust a bright and resourceful guy like Inbred Ed in this day and age, who can you trust?
God Damn My Life.
