The Seven Deadly Sins (25 page)

When you break it down to its barest minimum, gluttony is nature's way of super-sizing the human race. People are getting larger and larger every second. I have been all over the world several times, and believe you me, it is not a specifically American problem, although pound for pound we have the biggest reputation. The global diet is fucking disgusting. We eat foods made from garbage. We eat animals that we process and inject with enough hormones to make them not so dissimilar from humans. We soak shit in fat then fry it and bread it and then fry it again. I am not saying it is not delicious; I can knock the fuck out of some chicken fried steak, especially smothered in sausage gravy and some hash browns on the side. But that is a surefire way to gastrointestinal mayhem. People are getting so fat they
are having bands put around their stomach tracts to keep them from eating too much. They used to just cut out lengths of intestines, which is extreme enough, but now they put a belt around your organs, proving once again that human beings will do anything possible to keep from having to exert some fucking self-control in their lives.

Do not get me wrong—I love to eat. It is one of those plugs I use to fill my despair. I can gorge with the best of them. I once made a man who outweighed me by 150 pounds tap out at a buffet. But I know my limits, which is a perfect segue for my next example of why gluttony is about as deadly as a barbecue fart in church: professional eating contests. I know you have heard of this shit; they broadcast the events on ESPN 2. There is even an official organization called the International Confederation of Competitive Eating. It is basically sanctioned gluttony for glory and profit. Men eating seventy hot dogs in two minutes, women eating several bowls of spaghetti before the final buzzer. . .I mean people call this shit a sport. Overeating is as much a sport as mopeds are motorcycles. Just because you get a trophy and a cash prize does not mean you deserve to be on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
. You deserve to have your fucking head examined, to be honest. It is unhealthy, it is unwise, and it is also the biggest “fuck you” to the parts of the planet living off flour and vitamin supplements. Children are starving to death all over the world. Meanwhile, John Fuckwrinkle gets a highlight on SportsCenter for eating one hundred hard-boiled eggs, breaking the record set last year by his arch rival Hank Buttertits. On this list of sins, that may be the closest it comes to actually earning its Deadly Badge. It is also one of the saddest things I have ever heard. Eating contests are just offensive, insulting, and, at the end of it all, a terrible excuse to find new
ways of staying in the adult end of the competitive gene pool. Hey, Americans cannot really compete on any other level, but I will tell you what: We will kick your ass at getting fatter in seconds, huh? You are goddamn right!

The nefarious gluts of the world prey on the weak and the desperate when you throw greed in the picture as well. The real key to making these sins deadly is combining them together. Alone they are fairly blasé. But in a tag team they can become as brutal as the Hart Foundation. So a greedy glut will slip you sweet sounding words and shallow flattery while gutting your future wants for his present needs. Like I have said, moderation keeps these whims from being nothing more than human folly. But giving in and letting them take control is the real sin. There is more to life than being sated. But try explaining that to a glutton with too much time and not enough balls.

We are all pseudo-vampires dying of thirst and searching for the next great food coma. We will take anything to hold off the wolverines inside our souls. The greatest battle of our lives takes place every day on the wasted spaces of our subconscious and the innermost workings of our tragic lifestyles. We spend and fuck and eat and fuck some more and lie and cheat and take and hurt and do everything to make everyone else just identical to us. The human condition is a lot like a true crime novel. A man eats so much they have to knock holes in a building to get him to a hospital. My first response is let him fucking rot: If he could not be bothered to take care of himself, why should anyone else save him? I get very angry when I hear about idiocies and ignorance. But then I have to give myself a time out and remind myself that we are all imperfect. The idioms of the world herald a time when we as a species realize our true potential and recognize that there is only one true god: the human soul. It binds us together
and gives us huge reserves of untapped power, unique strength, and infinite wisdom. I have all the optimism that this sentiment is true, but not that the idea as a widespread notion will come to pass anytime soon. If we are the “one true god,” then god has a lot of fucking explaining to do.

I watch the passing of time and expectation with the eyes of someone who missed last week's episode but knows the series will not end well. We take ourselves too damn seriously. We think that everything we do is a miracle. It is only a miracle when no one gets hurt. We are common gardens with roses and weeds alike. We are exceptional with exceptions. How dare we declare that everything that everyone does is phenomenal? All we have done is dilute the juice and turn it into Kool-Aid. So it is no wonder that the volume gets turned up on things that are beneath us, such as gluttony.

Street gangs and criminals are gluttons for violence. Politicians are gluttons for power. Scholars are gluttons for knowledge. Children are gluttons for safety. Gluts are gluttons for gluttony.

What seems worse: having everything you want or wanting everything you have?

There is a famous quote that states “satisfaction is the death of desire.” You would be surprised how many people get credited with that one, everyone from Bob Dylan to Steven Spielberg. Hell, some asshole even said Pete Wentz came up with it. My buddies in Hatebreed have a killer album by that name. But I believe it is one of the Dalai Lama's quotes. I happen to agree with it. The human spirit needs a healthy hunger to continue on its way toward achievement and discovery. Gluttony can stoke the fires that keep us dancing on our tiptoes, but it is hardly deadly. In fact, no one can really be satisfied. You can stop
trying after you have succeeded, but you are not satisfied. After every conquest, our eyes instinctively scan the horizon for the next adventure, the next challenge, and the next reason to keep our hearts pumping red-hot excitement into our 70/30 mixture. It is one of the great gifts I accepted long ago. As long as I am still looking, I will always find myself. Sometimes that gets me in trouble.

You see, I am also a glutton for the truth. I hate fakes, shams, and liars—I always have. I cannot stand it when troglodytes ascend to heights I know damn well they do not have the talent to have earned. So I run my mouth, usually with no censor. I do not care who hears it or who takes exception. I do not give a fuck how it affects my career sometimes. I try to do my very best to call it the way I see it. Maybe that is pride or my vanity talking, but I have seen truly gifted people stepped on by ruthless hacks in the pursuit of empty credit, not actual accomplishment. When I raise my voice to protest, I am regarded as a jealous asshole.

Sometimes I feel like a leper in a health club because in every category, I categorically do not fit. That can be a scary concept late at night when all you get are silent screams of doubt and defiance. But the glutton inside is just pulling for me and mine. Something has to drive us to do our best and worst. Something has to lift our lids in the morning and keep us from shitting the bed. That something is the hunger. So before we go throwing gluttony under the deadly bus, take a look at our sweet teeth and our hobbies and our careers and our needs and realize that we have to read between the lines a little bit and come to terms with the fact that without “sins” like gluttony, our hearts' desires would be swamp grass and tasteless oxygen. Our aspirations would sink like an old Carolina brick. But with just the right
amount of gluttony in our lives, we keep our hands busy, our stomachs working, and our eyes on the prize. No one can tell me that it is a sin to want something in excess, or at least no one can convince me it is a sin anyway. I know there are consequences to our actions, but when the reward is rich and the resolve is rigid and strong, this intergalactic herd of advanced apes could just be ripe for enlightenment. I have seen great things in our future, but all that can change when we stop yearning for something great, for ourselves or otherwise.

Look, I do not want anyone to be hurt or suffer. I do not want anyone to feel trapped in his or her own life. I want people to
feel
what we were all meant to feel. But I want you all to let go of that guilt you let swing around from your backs. You are carrying exponential pain, the corpses of past mistakes. You mean to tell me we are given a gift of sensation and prescience only to be treated like bastards and irritants when we try to find the boundaries for ourselves? And who said that guy who invented the Hover Chair could be named Tom Kruse? There is only one Tom Cruise by gum and he is a smiling, gnarly, rich alien psycho and I love his movies. I do not give a shit—he kicks ass. I got lost again, huh? Fuck me, I have to call someone about that....

I lived in a closet, woke up in a dumpster and nearly died several times. Now I work every day doing what I was born to do. I am a glutton for my work, my passion, and my creations. I am where I am because it is never enough to have done anything—it only matters what I am doing. I love being a father and a star all at once, and I do each with the same zeal I have had for years and years. I would have nothing without my capacity for hunger. It has brought me so many blessings that I stopped counting them long ago. Now knowing that, knowing me, and knowing common sense, do me a favor and take a deep breath, slow
down, and answer this question: If all that is true and amazing, who the hell can call gluttony a sin? If hunger is the root of all desire, how can that not fuel our dexterity?

I refuse to hide behind logic that dictates that normal behavior has to be vanilla and bland. I resist the doctrine that dignifies the notion of civilized decorum and that we cannot embrace our inner cravings. This kind of thinking keeps us tied to superstitions and cheapens our attempts to ascend to a better level of consciousness. Call me crazy, but is it a coincidence that almost all of these sins are the very sensations that make us feel alive? Is it me, or does it feel like ghosts from the past are still holding our puppet strings? I am sick and fucking tired of these so-called texts of faith that sell us salvation through the murder of our senses. They have no faith in the human sense of moderation. They have no faith in people. They are hypocrites. They are scared to death of their own weak wills and subscribe to believing that we are all the same. We are all “sinners.” If they want to fall from grace and sell themselves short, so be it. But they can leave us alone, for fuck's sake. No one is going to shill to me a new set of standards. I am a defiant voice of sanity in the last ward on earth. Do not let them convince you that you are crazy. They are the ones twisting the spin. So they are the obvious choices to pass out the sins.

Our quiet noon in the sun may seem like a distant fantasy. Our quest for true oneness may merely be an ambling stop way off in the distance. But hope can put years back on the end of your life. The power of the mind is almost otherworldly sometimes. There are mysteries within enigmas in the future. Maybe we will never have a good answer for anything.

Me? Make no mistakes—I will be around. I will drink my double-thick shakes in triple-digit heat until they finally take my
words away as well. I have no fear anymore. Why should I? It is just life, man. Life is only as frivolous as we make it. You build too many walls around it and you will find yourself locked out of your own life. If you feel like there is something better, tell the person next to you. Then tell them to tell the person next to them, and so on and so forth. Who knows? Maybe word will get back to me in the end.

Then I will rest my case.

I
remember when they changed the Coke.

I was twelve years old living in Elk Run Heights, Iowa. It was a pinky print of a town on the outskirts of Waterloo. This might be the first time anyone has ever written about it. But alas, its mention stops here. I was living with my mom and her band of alcoholics in a stout duplex across the street from a convenience store called Pronto, where I usually stole my breakfast and lunch every morning. It was there, in 1985, where I was introduced to the New Coke. I paid it little attention since we were a Pepsi household, but over the next few days I came to realize the importance of what I was witnessing. People were fucking pissed.
The new CEO of Coca-Cola kept appearing on shows like
60 Minutes
and
Current Affair
, hair slicked back and chugging gallons of the stuff. The New Coke had a new look, too—more modern than the classic design and a precursor to the labels we see today, ironically enough, on Pepsi products. The problem was that it tasted like shit. The Old Coke had a sugary-sweet slight bitterness to it; the New Coke was a combo of battery acid and Golden Griddle pancake syrup. The world was on the brink of destruction. People were fighting in the streets and appearing on
Donahue
to decry the treatment of a beloved national treasure, all of which made me smirk because at the end of the day, who really gave a one-wipe shit if they changed the flavor? Even the CEO of Pepsi came out to laud the fact that they would never change their own product, another bit of O' Henry since Pepsi had been changing and perfecting their formulas for decades.