Extremely Dark Chocolates (Bayan's Tirades: Volume 1)

By Rick Bayan

Join the author of "The Cynic's Dictionary" on a morbidly amusing tour of life's bleak underside. Gathered from the original "tirades" on Bayan's vintage Cynic's Sanctuary website, these eloquently witty essays will have you chuckling sympathetically at the ghastly fates that the gods inflict on innocent organisms. (It beats screaming in terror, doesn't it?)

Contents include "On Eating Our Fellow Creatures," "A Living Heck," "The Friendly Face of Evil," "Down with Natural Selection!," "In Heaven There Is No Pez," "A Breath of Used Air," "Thinking like a Cockroach," "When Does the Good Part Begin?" and 30 more meditations on the darker side of life and the lighter side of death.

Despite the bittersweet subject matter, "Extremely Dark Chocolates" is a tonic to read. Bayan's word-magic and cheerful cynicism create an instant bond with readers who yearn for humor with heart, style and substance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rick Bayan
• Release date: Oct 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991359905

Rick Bayan

I was born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I enjoyed an idyllic semi-suburban childhood. I graduated from Rutgers with a degree in history, then picked up a master's in journalism from the University of Illinois. At the latter institution I learned little about reporting but discovered the works of classic American curmudgeon H. L. Mencken. In my twenties I held a number of typical jobs for an idealistic liberal arts graduate, including assistant editor of Rubber Age and managing editor of Container News. At Time-Life Books I was assigned to write about plumbing fixtures. After 18 months of gainful unemployment (during which I burrowed into dozens of great books and saw my first essays published), I survived seven years as chief copywriter at Barron’s Educational Series. In 1985 I moved from New York to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Why? I had taken a job as advertising copy chief at Day-Timers, the original producer of old-fashioned personal organizers. (People still wrote on paper then.) My work there won six advertising awards. In the evenings I crafted my "disgruntled definitions" for The Cynic's Dictionary (Morrow, 1994) on my office computer. Two years later I created The Cynic’s Sanctuary online to promote my book, but the site took on a life of its own – with lively message board conversations, my own monthly "tirades" and other fun features. I also wrote a weekly syndicated column, "Some Cynical Guy," for Upbeat Online. One dedicated fan even wrote a screenplay, I, Cynic, based on my writings. After 14 years at Day-Timers, I called it quits and leaped into the perilous world of freelance writing and creative consulting. As Richard Bayan (my “serious” professional alter ego), I’m the author of the popular advertising thesaurus Words That Sell and its spawn, More Words That Sell, both published by McGraw-Hill. I've also published three collections of humorous essays on Smashwords: Extremely Dark Chocolates, Lifestyles of the Doomed, and The World Is My Obstacle Course. In 2007 I created The New Moderate (www.newmoderate.com), a blog for "extreme" centrists. I’ve been interviewed by CNN, Psychology Today, Australia's leading women's magazine and numerous radio and TV shows. These days you can find me living with my teenage son and a middle-aged cat in a tree-shaded former stable in Philadelphia. I’m a longtime birdwatcher and one of the few people alive who can do a reasonably accurate vocal impression of Teddy Roosevelt. Wish me luck (and buy my books!).

Book preview

I wrote all the pieces in Extremely Dark Chocolates between 1997 and 2002. The majority of them first appeared as monthly tirades on my vintage website, The Cynic’s Sanctuary. The others come to you from my syndicated column, Some Cynical Guy, written for Upbeat Online (and which I cross-posted on The Cynic’s Sanctuary with the publisher’s permission).

This is no random collection of essays and columns, though. I’ve organized Extremely Dark Chocolates around one of my favorite preoccupations: finding dark humor in aging, decline, death, funerals, decay, extinction and other ghastly fates that the gods inflict on innocent organisms.

You might catch some dated references here and there, but I decided to leave these essays in their original form, with minor edits and a few title changes, rather than tailor them to the present. (The revised references would quickly become dated again, anyway.) Most of the rueful humor and observations in this book should stand up for another generation or two, provided that you’re still fluent in the archaic, full-bodied English prose that preceded Textspeak.

Extremely Dark Chocolates is Volume 1 of a projected cynic’s trilogy that will also include Lifestyles of the Doomed (notes on the more insufferable trends in our culture at the turn of the millennium) and The World Is My Obstacle Course (autobiographical reflections of a kinder, gentler cynic struggling with an uncooperative universe). Together the three books should encompass the best essays from the glory years of The Cynic’s Sanctuary. If you’re my kind of reader, I hope you’ll think of me as your kind of writer.

Rick Bayan

Philadelphia, October 2014

Preface

I like my chocolate and my humor dark. For me, bittersweet is one of the most luscious and underrated words in the English language. The cynic in me loves the image of sorrow and delight entwined in an eternal tango. And what is a cynic, after all, but a bruised romantic, a virtuous fellow driven to the outlaw fringes of life by rejection, hard luck and his own damnable disinclination to be a sheep? Rueful humor comes naturally to such sad renegade souls.

We philosophical cynics actually enjoy thinking about death and doom; such melancholy reflections reinforce our conviction that the cosmos is rigged against us. As perennial outsiders, we’ve managed to detach ourselves from the rat race and its trivial urgencies. We’re free enough (and alienated enough) to ponder the larger issues of life and death that our perky consumer culture tends to stuff into the nearest drawer. We harbor no delusions of gaudy immortality. We’re reasonably certain that we’re all headed for the communal compost heap, a fate so grotesque that some of us can’t help chuckling about it. A little nervously, perhaps, but it beats screaming in terror, doesn’t it?

If you’d rather chuckle than scream in terror, I think you’ll find comfort here. I’m inviting you to join me on a morbidly amusing tour of life’s dark underside: the food chain, cultural decline, suffering, insanity, houseflies, bad music, chronic disappointment, aging, the inequality of lifespans, death, burial and other inconveniences. Such doleful preoccupations are natural for a veteran cynic like me. Maybe they’re your preoccupations, too. In these pages you can watch me dance on a high wire strung above the yawning chasm; you can gasp as I teeter between gallows humor and honest contemplation of the terminally awful. For bittersweet souls like us, that’s entertainment.

I should confess that I am a Baby Boomer, born precisely at the midpoint of the twentieth century. I share my generation’s epic self-absorption as well as its pathological fear of aging, with this minor distinction: at least I’m aware of it.

If all goes according to plans, the Boomers will become the first generation in history to advance directly from adolescence to senility without the usual interval of maturity. Now that some of us are already dropping from coronary incidents and various degenerative afflictions, the alarms are sounding. Could it be that we’re just mortal mammals after all, destined to fade and die like elderly beagles or Lyndon B. Johnson? Most of us find it inconceivable that our moving parts will stop working… that eventually we’ll be tossed into the trash along with the broken toaster oven. We thought we’d change the world, but the world is changing us. How unfair, and how inevitable!

Of course, you don’t have to be a Boomer to fret about sliding down the long chute to oblivion. You simply have to be a mortal Earthling with the time and inclination to think about larger issues than body piercings and desirable school districts. If you’re that kind of thinker, you’re probably my kind of reader. We might even be kindred spirits.

These chocolates are for you. Inside them you’ll find an intriguing variety of crunchy, creamy, chewy, sweet, salty, tangy and nougaty centers. They’re dark and somewhat bitter but strangely comforting to the soul. Come on, open the box...

A Living Heck

Picture an eternal Pennsylvania March, that charmless and soul-shriveling month – a muddy no-man's-land between the icy glitter of winter and the blossomy breezes of spring. Like a skilled presidential candidate, March promises new beginnings but delivers more of the same: in this case, expanses of khaki-colored grass, the blackened crusts of last month's snow, wrinkled trees looking geriatric in their nakedness.

Now picture yourself driving through that March landscape, past the crowded McMansions with their comically opulent facades, past condominium complexes that look like upscale barracks, past the office parks and hotel-conference centers, the convenience stores, used-car lots, mini-malls, seedy bowling lanes, deserted diners and local beverage distributors, past the chain bookstores, chain pizzerias, chain transmission centers and chain megaplexes. Twenty-two movies to choose from, and none worth choosing.

You stop at a red light; in fact, every light is red. When it turns green, you don't move. Nobody moves. You suspect that somebody up ahead is color-blind. You look heavenward and start tapping the dashboard with your free hand. You tap it repeatedly, a little harder with each tap. Come on, you mutter. "COME on. COME ON!!" The cars ahead of you don't listen; they never do. You might as well try to convert your cat to Mormonism.

Your appointment began five minutes ago, and you still have at least a mile to go before you get there. At an average speed of three miles an hour, you'll be just about 25 minutes late – probably a little later if you decide to bump the car ahead of you. If you were wearing a blood pressure cuff right now, you wouldn't want to look.

A light rain begins to pepper your windshield. You turn on the wipers, which squeak like mid-size rodents and smear the glass. You sit inside your motionless car, marooned in a March gridlock, with only the stark highwayscape and spattering rain for companionship. Everything outside is beige and wet. Nowhere in your field of view do you spot a congenial speck of greenery or a cause for merriment.

This is hell, you think. But it's not... not really.

What unspeakably bleak sinkhole of the spirit have I brought you to? It looks and feels familiar... you suspect you've been here before. In fact, you've been here so often that you've ceased to regard it as a separate place.

You're in HECK, good friend – the lesser, more mundane version of hell that most of us inhabit on a daily basis. No sulfurous fumes or eternal fires emanate from this sunless abode... nothing as nightmarish as Dante's infernal cesspools, drizzling embers or winged demons. No, those cinematic special effects would be too dazzling, too diverting, too stimulating to the senses. Heck isn't a Steven Spielberg production; it's more of a minor afternoon soap opera. The souls of the darned are condemned to pass their days in sulking, inner conflict and chronic disappointment.

You didn't know that heck was an actual place? Thought it was simply a mild colloquial euphemism, did you? The fact is that heck is more real than hell – certainly more real than purgatory, which the early Church Fathers cleverly concocted as a means of adding to the insecurities of the faithful. The reasoning was that imperfect souls have to work off their impurities in a kind of spiritual health-and-fitness club before being admitted to God's skybox.

Obviously our own living heck has rendered purgatory redundant and obsolete. Purgatory? What's the point? After a lifetime in heck, most of us would respond with a jaded Been there, done that.

How can I describe heck for the uninitiated? It's not easy, but I'll give it a try. The essence of heck is petty frustration, inconvenience, monotony and vexation of the spirit. Heck is piles of mail that proliferate on the coffee table: overdue bills, incomprehensible tax forms, urgent sweepstakes offers, eight consecutive unread issues of Entertainment Weekly. It's dirty cat-litter boxes to clean and tightly-spaced teeth to floss. It's late fees and malfunctioning toilets, busy signals and computer error messages, forced gaiety and post-nasal drip. It's psoriasis on your elbows and thinning hair on your scalp. It's a business card that slips off your desk and vanishes into another dimension.

Remember not to confuse heck and hell. Heck is working long days in a windowless office, solemnly and with scant hope of advancement – while your younger colleague, who scored 210 points lower than you on the Verbal SAT, has just been promoted to vice president. Hell is being personally demoted by that vice president and moved into a cubicle.

Heck is winning a place of honor on the telemarketing lists of every nonprofit organization between Anchorage and Key Largo. Hell is being phoned at midnight by an extortionist who claims to have kidnapped your firstborn.

Heck is being summoned for jury duty. Hell is being sentenced to a maximum-security prison and finding that your cellmate wants a more meaningful relationship.

Heck is feeling compelled to check all the water faucets before you leave the house. Hell is a lifelong case of paranoid schizophrenia in which you think you are a water faucet.

You experience Supermarket Heck when you find a choice spot in the express lane, then stand motionless while the shoppers in the adjoining lanes pass you by. You know the pain of Stock Market Heck when you finally sell a sagging company for a 50 percent loss, then watch it gain 150 percent over the next three weeks. Any Catch-22 situation is a curse from heck: if you want to publish a book, you need an agent; to get an agent, you need to have published a book. The darned are all too familiar with such heckish reasoning.

Writing itself is a heckish trade: you struggle incessantly to find your voice; you sweat profusely over every adjective and semi-colon; you bruise your soul. You're constantly wondering what to say next, and when you say it, whether you should have said something else. When you're done, the critics hurl contempt in your general direction or, worse yet, fail to notice you at all. Your readers wouldn't populate a small town in Albania; in fact, you could earn more money as a bell-hop at your local Ramada Inn. Still you're compelled to pursue your wayward course, though your craft is as doomed and leaky as the Titanic.

This is beginning to sound less like heck and more like the other place. As long as I'm there, I might as well enjoy the special effects. Start the fires! Bring on the sulfurous fumes! Let the winged demons fly! And if you find yourself beginning to weary of heck's pallid miseries, feel free to join me.

Flesh and Mortality

I write this nugget of inspiration on the eve of my birthday, plagued as I am with my annual case of laryngitis and congestion of the sinuses, not to mention the chronic eyestrain that has been my live-in companion for the past twenty-odd years. My window overlooks what used to be a verdant field of corn and sunflowers. Now brown as a meat-loaf, the barren midwinter landscape is undergoing a slow metamorphosis into a housing tract. Three skeletal homes have already appeared on the scene, oversized and ostentatious. Corporate housing, I call it. Many more will be rising this year. The land is being engulfed by suburbia. And wherever that happens, suburbanites are sure to follow.

On the whole, it is a good day to hibernate.

But I have promises to keep, and tomorrow I will attempt to drag myself to work. There will be no hibernation for this malfunctioning heap of bones, tissues, internal organs, nerves, cells, protoplasm, mitochondria, carbon atoms, and other biochemical flotsam that makes up the unique individual known as Rick Bayan.

When we're well, we tend to think of ourselves as concepts. We're executives, artists, professionals, cybergeeks. We identify with one socioeconomic class or another. We're members of a political party, a church, a generation. We're leaders, followers, or cynics. We like classical music, or (as the other 99% of the population would have it) we don't. We're straight, gay, indifferent, or fond of sheep. We believe in the power of crystals and mantras, or we're incurable golfers.

Most days find me diligently engaged in the maintenance of my various self-concepts. Rick Bayan, professional, puts in an eight-to-ten-hour day writing advertising to help his company gain market share (and to earn enough money to buy food and toys). Rick Bayan, author, carries a notebook of ideas for future books that might finally catapult him to fame or infamy. Rick Bayan, webmaster, looks in on his site and tries to subdue a flame war. Rick Bayan, bachelor, attends a party and glances furtively at the ring fingers of the more attractive women. Rick Bayan, enthusiast of the classics, reads half a chapter of Thoreau's Walden and nods off.

But illness has a marvelous way of reducing us to our biological essence. The self-concepts peel away like the layers of an onion. The tempo of life slows from allegro to adagio. We become aware of ourselves as mere organisms. And the more astute among us come to a sobering conclusion: that we're little more than pulsating sacks of flesh with a tenuous grip on life. It continually amazes me that similar sacks of flesh have accomplished so much over the centuries. There were ancient sacks of flesh that invented the wheel and debated philosophy... medieval sacks of flesh that built cathedrals and engaged in jousting matches... a sailing sack of flesh that discovered the New World... a colonial American sack of flesh that defeated the British and became the familiar face on the dollar bill... a short French sack of flesh that conquered most of Europe before meeting its Waterloo... a wild-haired twentieth-century scientific sack of flesh that changed our perception of the universe.

Amazing deeds for mere sacks of flesh, you say? I agree. But then I inevitably add: Every one of those sacks has now disintegrated into dust. They are defunct. They are former sacks. They are no longer aware of having been sacks at all. A living dung-beetle today has more intelligence and wit than the remains of all those glorious sacks put together.

In practice, this concept of man-as-sack is viable only in the sick-room. When I return to the office tomorrow, and my boss expects me to meet half-a-dozen deadlines within two hours, I can't yell out, What do you want from me? I'm only a sack of flesh! At a meeting filled with self-important pronouncements from top management, I can't interrupt the proceedings and shout, What difference does it make? We're all sacks of flesh, and we're all going to die! And yet it's true. We keep pushing ourselves beyond our biological limits, enduring lethal doses of stress and monotony day after day, to meet some artificial concept of who or what we're supposed to be.

I'm an advertising copywriter; therefore I must write advertising copy. Five days a week. Eight to ten hours a day. Whether or not