Classic Remaster – Way of the Barbarian

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to become immune to human laws. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…

There’s a Russian religious text called The Way of The Pilgrim that suggests one can achieve a state of grace by incessantly reciting the Jesus Prayer until it becomes automatic. I thought this was a beautiful idea: It’s like brainwashing your own soul into goodness. I decided to give the concept a shot myself, but I don’t really want to be filled with grace. So instead of the Jesus Prayer, I am incessantly repeating an exchange from Conan the Barbarian. With every heartbeat, I am going to pray: 

“Conan, what is best in life?”

“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their women.” 

***

I woke up as usual: sticky, frustrated, and unconsciously suckling at a bottle of Beefeaters like it was the sour teat of Bessundra, Sumerian cow-goddess of both fertility and brewing.

I remembered my goal: 

“CONAN!” I bellowed. “WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE?” 

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” came an answer from the living room. 

“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you,” I continued softly, padding across the blood-stained hallway (ain’t a thing; I just do my bleeding in the hallway).

I made the living room, and couldn’t help but notice that Bill Pullman was suspended from my ceiling.

Pretty sure that I didn’t have a Bill Pullman chandelier before. I closed my eyes and counted to 10, because I’m no Freshman to waking nightmares. 

Still there. He hung from an elaborate contraption that looked like equal parts examination table and torture rack. He was strapped into it with a pair of Darth Vader’s ski-boots. His face was purple and flushed. A single bead of sweat rolled down his neck and traced the contours of his jawline. 

“Bill Pullman?” I ventured.

His eyes snapped open. They were so bloodshot you could actually see the bulge of veins in there.

“PAX. TON.” He screeched, heaving himself to the ceiling. “I’m motherfucking Bill Paxton, you greenish shitsmear.” 

He undid the snaps on his boots and flipped to the ground. The blood quickly drained from his head, filtering down through his torso. I could see every single artery filling up, like an intricate network of tiny snakes digesting.

“Why are you on my ceiling, Bill Paxton?” I asked what I thought to be a reasonable question. 

“This is how I sleep, dick ooze! The single greatest flaw in the human experience is the horizontal sleeping position. It reduces bloodflow to the brain and starves the cells of oxygen. Every single night that I sleep like this, I get smarter. When last measured, I had an IQ of 735. I fuckin’ invented yogurt, you bag of distended testicles.” 

I shrank back, but remembered my new mantra. 

“Conan!” I told him matter-of-factly, “what is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” 

“What are you, some of kind of fuckin’ silica pack eater?” He edged toward the kitchen. “Why do you keep saying that?” 

Easily the best thing in my life was finding Bill Paxton inverted in my living room. I couldn’t lose this. I had to internalize my prayer.

‘Conanwhatisbestinlife,’ I thought to myself, even as I reassured Bill Paxton that I was not, in fact, “the dippest shit in fucktown” as he kept insisting. 

I needed a cool lie. I explained that I was part of an experimental prog-rock band that covered movie dialogue instead of songs. 

“What’s this merry band of butthole enthusiasts called?” he inquired, seemingly set at ease. 

“The… SoundtraXXX?” I regretted it immediately. 

“That’s a name stupider than two shits on a single fuck,” he laughed. 

Damn, but the man could swear. He saw what I was thinking:

“It’s the inverted sleeping, cockfart. It stimulates the intellect, but also inflames the part of the brain responsible for aggression. I’m so fuckin’ smart I’m like Einstein gaping Tesla’s asshole, but I swear like a syphilitic sailor and I fuckin’ kill dudes like you slap your limp little dick around.” 

As if to drive his point home, he suddenly karate-kicked my refrigerator. It rocked gently. The soft jingle of glass bottles clanking together. We stood in silence for a long moment. 

“Fucknuckles,” he whispered. 

***

I still had to work, and the last time I left Bill Paxton alone in my house he replaced my ceiling fan with a profane genius-swing. We hopped in my weather-beaten Kia and he sung along to Kansas’s Carry on Wayward Son, replacing every single word with some variation of “fuck.” 

“Fuckin’ fuck my fucko fuu-uuuck” sang Bill Paxton. “Fuck you fuck fuck motherfuu-uuuck.” 

I was oddly serene. I should have been nervous. I should have been confused. But I was having difficulty parsing emotions while repeating my mantra. 

LamentationoftheirwomenConanwhatisbest. 

The office. Bill Paxton rabbit punched my glove-box as I talked to the security guard. 

“He needs no visi-tor pass,” I informed the guard, puffing my chest out. “This is the Paxton and he goes where he will.” 

My speech patterns were getting bizarre. I made a mental note to research potential side-effects of brainwashing, and was surprised to find myself clutching the guard’s necktie and kneeling on his back. I’m not sure when I brought him to the ground, but I remember exactly when I got the erection.

A little fieldmouse of a man refused to hold the elevator for us, so Bill Paxton and I raced up the stairs instead. We were waiting for him when the doors opened on the 7th floor. Bill Paxton took him high with a clothesline, I went low and slide-kicked his knees out. His briefcase exploded. A sheaf of papers, a laptop, a saran-wrapped croissant. Shrapnel from a Business Grenade. 

Bill Paxton instantly regretted it. He offered the man a hand up while I held my arms in the air and roared. 

“What some call misfortune, others call adventure,” Paxton consoled the mouse. “The Chinese have a word that means both tragedy and opportunity. Suckfuckers fuck sucks.”

The meek one sprinted toward the fire exit, triggering my chase reflex. He survived that day. The hunt is not always successful.

“Come, Paxton. Let us take the office,” I suggested. The edges of my vision were going red, dimmed by a curtain of blood. 

Crushyourenemiesandseethemdriven. 

“Why do you ride with me, Paxton?” I said.

“Are you asking how we met, shitclot?” He asked. “Saw you last night at the bar — you got so drunk you ate an entire fake plant. Not a small one. Like a fern. I fuckin’ had to follow up on that. For science.”

I pushed open the double glass doors leading to my office. They shattered as they rebounded off the walls. 

“Lament, women! Rejoice, men! We ride. WE RIDE!” I roared.

 “Ffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-” Paxton hummed under his breath. 

***

I was having a hard time concentrating on the PowerPoint Presentation, so I decided to pinch and hiss at the man beside me. I glowered at him, daring him to cry out. He was quietly sobbing when the lights came up.

At some point during the presentation, I had stripped to the waist and drawn primitive runes across my torso with a highlighter. Somewhere along the line I had also lost Bill Paxton. That would probably have repercussions later. 

A man I once recognized as my superior was summoning me forward. It seemed that I had some sort of responsibility here — a report to give, an argument to proffer — I had no idea what these petty business concerns entailed, nor did I care. I stood and began tearing at my chair. My coworkers gabbled in confusion. Somewhere, the sound of glass breaking. Somewhere, a muffled shout. The slap of footsteps, growing louder. A distant alarm. 

Bestinlifetocrush.

One final wrench and I pulled the steel spine of my chair free. I wrapped the base of it in the shredded cloth of my discarded shirt. I wielded it in both hands, my makeshift broadsword, and charged my boss with a barbaric yawp. We would find out, together, which man was truly superior. Blood asks a question. Blood gives an answer.

The window facing the main room bubbled up like a blistering pustule, and burst in a shower of flames and glass. Looking through the shattered pane, I saw hell.

“BILL PULLMAN JUST BUILT A FLAMETHROWER OUT OF THE COPY MACHINE AND HE’S BURNING EVERYTHING!” Screamed a disheveled woman. 

“PAX. FUCKING. TON.” Bill screamed after the woman, as she fled from a burst of fresh flame. “CHRIST ON AN ASS I AM SO BILL PAXTON AS FUCK!” 

There was frenzy in The Paxton’s eyes. Sweat poured down his neck as he called with his trigger, and the inferno answered. A manic laugh percolated in my gut, overflowed my chest, poured out from my lips. I mounted the conference table, held my Ikeablade aloft, and rejoiced in the heat of the flames. I roared, because it felt good to roar.

LAMENTATIONOFTHEIRWOMEN.

***

I woke to the comfortingly pedestrian sounds of the morning news. It was all a fever dream, probably brought on by two bottles of Aftershock poured into a vaporizer and inhaled from an embossed foil balloon with the words “Happy Retirement, Martin” written in gold leaf across the front. It just felt like that kind of dream.

I reached for my face and came up short. Pain in my wrist. I was not in my own bed, nor was I alone. My coworkers — bruised, beaten, and burned — were standing over me.

“I just had the weirdest dream,” I laughed, “and you were there! And you were there! And you were there! And hey why am I chained to this radiator?” 

“Is he out of it now?” One asked.

“Bill Paxton’s agent said there was some sort of gas leak that caused temporary madness.” 

“I guess it’s worn off.”

“Should we let him go?” 

“I suppose. Jeremy, get the chains off, would you?” 

A little fieldmouse of a man reached down to undo my bindings. I smiled at him benignly.

The lock tumbled to the floor. He leaned close to shake the chains loose.

“Conan,” I whispered in his ear as my blood began to burn. “What is best in life?”