The Bartender Knows: COSMIC BREAK UPS (Or, "It'sThe End Of The World As We Know It")

I wake up and my cat Lysander is sitting on my head. I crack an eye open, blurry from last night’s debauchery, and hear a strange flittering sound from her mouth. She stretches up to the window pane above my pillow, her yellow eyes intent out the window.

The flittering sound continues. She is no longer the shy kitten I once knew. Her tail wags back and forth, her shoulders hunch like she’s in the African brush. Then I hear what’s riling her up. Out my window in a recently blooming tree is a nest of new baby birds, all happily chirping on one of the branches.

Lysander wants to kill them. Yep. Murder. I pet Lysander quickly. She turns, sweet as ever, and meows something cute.

“You’re a fucking killer, Lysander. A goddamn murderer,” I say.

Nature’s instincts. Thousands of years of genetic programming. My cat, although sickly sweet, wants to tear the living flesh off these chirping little birds. Then I think about if she was bigger than me she’d kill me too, play with my body and bring my lifeless corpse to someone she respects.

And you Nature lovers want to protect the environment? It took thousands of years to finally conquer Nature with roads, mini-malls and community colleges, and now you want to go back to ‘organic’ life?

Nature would kill you (especially you) if you returned to it.

Shit, when I’m at the grocery store and am asked if I want paper or plastic, I demand plastic.

Keep Nature on her fucking toes.

This week I received a pained letter. Thank God there are bartenders. We’re not just here to make out with your girlfriend after you storm out of the bar after a fight.

The letter reads:

ok, so i have a question for the Bartender Who Knows:

have you been noticing slews of break-ups recently? it seems everyday a friend, acquaintance, or even complete strangers have been telling me their break-up stories - and i'm not talking breaking up with the guy you've been knocking boots with for 2 weeks, i'm talking long term, heavy duty relationships. is this a change in the cosmos? didn't someone somewhere once say that life and other things cycle every 7 or 8 years? you might say it's the weather - spring fever and all - but i think it's something more...internal, if that makes sense. What is happening in our universe, Bartender? How long will this state of flux last?

Sincerely,

Waiting for the Flux Capacitor to Stabilize

Dear ‘Waiting For The Flux Capacitor to Stabilize”,

Marty McFly would be worried too.

I totally agree something is drastically wrong in the universe. But I generally feel that way when I don’t have sex and am hungover. And I read way too much Freud and Nietzche.

For fun. So it’s probably just me.

What you’re saying is true. I’ve been seeing it all over the place. Couples fighting on the streets, divorces from long term married folk, break ups galore. I even have an old friend, him and his girl a goddamn institution like Catholicism, are now trying to ‘work things out’, which in relationship speak means they are going to break up in 3 weeks.

Two major factors are working against relationships in the cosmos as we speak, and you were partially right about one of them.

SPRING TIME IS STUPID

Yep.

Right when the squirrels in the park start trying to fuck each other I know something is going on. I mean, walk outside. After a grey and long Winter, now these blooming flowers on the trees are everywhere! You know what those flowers on the trees are?

Flowers are reproductive organs.

So every time you’re out there walking around on a fine Spring day ogling the new found flowers on the trees, you basic looking at Nature’s version of dick/pussy you fucking perv. When they say ‘sex is in the air’, literally, it’s in the air, like on the trees above you when you walk around.

Now with all of this pornography floating about, you look over at your stale mate (no pun intended) and realize: “What the hell am I doing with this person?” All the fights. All the arguments. You’ve tried every version of sex under the sun. You met their parents. You know everything there is about them. They can no longer surprise you.

Combine that with all the other people feeling the same way, all giving a seductive side glance your way, how in the hell can us humans (and we are animals, let us not forget) resist? We can’t be blamed.

Just like Lysander wants to tear the flesh off the pretty birds, we simply were not built for monogamy. And when finally you realize (and everyone does in the end) that staying together because of arbitrary reasons like ‘not wanting to die alone’ simply does not give dominance over thousands of years of preternatural genetics.

And give me the ‘we’re higher than animals’ speech and I’ll tell you to go film yourself fucking next time and you tell me exactly what you see.

2012 WILL KILL US ALL

It is the end of the world. I assure you. Just like Y2K. You were there in the 90’s. You know what I’m talking about.

The President was lying to you about a blowjob. There were some secret wars going on ‘over there’. The end of a Millennium was upon us. People knew it had to do something with this thing called the Inter-web. The Christians were clambering (as they always do). Radiohead got really, really weird. You’re sitting around finding hidden meanings in Tool lyrics. The Ouija Board told you the end was nigh. Kurt was dead. David Bowie actually started to suck. Emo got invented. The 90’s, all full of doom and gloom, proved it was all over.

Who wants to stay together when you know the world is coming to an end? Another prophecy of the Mayan calendar is to get rid of your failing relationship. It could be the end of all existence! Do you really want to spend it sitting next to your partner watching Netflix together in silence? Let’s say there is a God: Now the planets explode and collide or whatever supposed to happen this fair December and you’re at the pearly gates and God looks down at you and says: “Really? Season Three of Ancient Aliens? This is how you spent your last days?”

Shameful.

So people are cosmically freaking out. Because just like Y2K, it will destroy the world as we know it. And frankly, we’d rather be lost in some Roman Orgy somewhere than having to sit in a cubicle on another drab Wednesday morning only to look forward to predictable mutual head and 7 minute sex when you get home.

It’s not like the first time, or the first year for that matter.

And it never will be again.

But don’t let it get you down, I’m sure it will all be over in December. Time to visit your local sex shop, get freaky, and buy that bunny outfit you’ve been thinking about!

Till next time!