Noah Cicero - The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. I

10. If you don’t have health insurance, are in insane debt, have warrants out on you, a mullet, several children, a shitty car, and a girlfriend missing three teeth, you can remain alive. You will not die from those things.

11. There is a statute of limitations on all types of bills, if you don’t have the money. Go online and see how long you have to wait. But whatever you do, don’t say you will pay the bill because the statute of limitations starts over then.

12. Your parents do not own you.

13. The government does not own you.

14. You do not own your lover and they do not own you.

15. If you decide you are going to kill someone, make sure it is a person you really want to kill.

16. Crackheads have their reasons.

17. If you have sex with one of your relatives it is not the end of the world.

18. All poor people are thieves. So are rich people. Some are just better at hiding it than others.

19. Charity is a confession of guilt.

20. People do change, but not always for the better.

21. Be wary of people who do not change.

22. When meeting people it is more important to judge not their intelligence but their level of fear.

23. Everyone thinks their baby is a genius.

24. There are only three things that link humans together: labor, sex, and terror.

25. The souls of the poor are hatred and violence.

27. What people love about God is not that he controls the world or built it, but that his ownership cannot be destroyed. Nobody can buy or steal what he owns. God also never dies.

28. Love is behavior.

29. If someone says, “I didn’t have a dime to my name,” they are lying; they know one of their rich relatives will eventually help them.

30. Question: Why don’t the American poor admit that they are poor? Answer: If they admitted it, they would gain a world and that terrifies them.

31. A very irresponsible person will suddenly become very responsible when it comes to free money.

32. Sluts are people who know how to have a good time.

33. The core American value is sadism.

34. People who say, “That’s a bad neighborhood,” have reduced the residents of that neighborhood to mythological animals and themselves into gods.

35. There are no good people.

36. There are no good parents.

37. If a person says, “He or she has a good heart,” it is guaranteed that that person is an asshole.

38. If a person is bipolar, it implies that they are an asshole.

39. There is a big difference between the phrases, “He says what he feels,” and, “He tells it like it is.” Michael Savage “says what he feels.” Charles Bukowski “tells it like it is.” Do you see the difference?

40. People never make four good choices in a row. If you can do three consistently, you’re pretty damn good.

When I drive Delphine to work at the bikini bar.

Her panties are still wet from washing them in the tub.

On the way to work we listen to classic rock.

And she dries her panties on the heater in the car.

I’m alive.

So what?

My head hurts!

Take more pills.

I got gas.

Take more pills.

My hemorrhoids have swelled and I can’t shit.

Jam Preparation H up my asshole.

I can’t get to sleep because I can’t stop thinking.

Drink more booze.

Joe’s dad at the distribution center had TVs fall thirty feet onto his back.

Now he can barely move.

I hear from Joe he sits up all night smoking in the dark.

Lighting the next cigarette with the cigarette he just got done with.

My mother’s back is destroyed too.

She hooks up electric things to her back.

She doesn’t have any teeth either.

My grandmother got shock treatments and remains on heavy tranquilizers.

Joe used to be on Paxil for his anxiety.

He says he gets worried a lot.

He drinks a lot, I don’t blame him.

My father takes vitamins so he can outlive my mom.

Sitcoms don’t have drug addicts on them.

If they do it is for only one episode and the problem is solved by the end of it.

Sitcoms don’t have husbands who beat their wives.

They don’t have useless no-good mothers.

They don’t swear, don’t belittle each other.

The fights on sitcoms are so contrived and considerate.

Married people fight when one or both of them is drunk.

Parents on sitcoms don’t smoke weed.

My dad smokes weed.

A lot of parents do.

My parents never behaved like the people on sitcoms, but they tried to in certain situations, in language and never behavior.

I was confused a lot as a child.

My parents always said I would grow up to work.

Have health insurance and children.

But work doesn’t bring happiness.

Just broken backs.

Anger.

The need for drugs.

Booze.

And arguments.

My father broke lamps, phones, plates, and TVs when he got angry.

Do you think this really matters?

I mean it.

Do you?

Do you want money for this?

What would I do with it?

Buy a pool and overdose on cocaine in it.

Maybe get a tattoo or a cornflower blue jumpsuit.

Or some rims or a signed Dale Earnhardt shirt.

What about fame, would you take that?

Yeah, that would be awesome; everyone would know my name and what my face looked like.

Is that all fame is, people knowing your name and what your face looks like?

Well, yeah, but that’s awesome.

What about happiness?

Oh, I gave up on that a long time ago. I once got the money to go on a two week vacation and it almost killed me. My brain isn’t used to long-term happiness.

What about love? You want love, don’t you? You deserve that, right?

Oh, fuck man, to love someone just means to me the person you go out with is the person you hate least in the world.

What if God came down from heaven and apologized to you?

I don’t think I would care; none of this was His fault.

What if all the Presidents of the United States of America apologized to you personally for this?

I would tell them to go fuck themselves.

Do you know what has been done to you?

No, but I’m sure it’s bad.

It is.

I went to karaoke the other day.

It was a cold and ugly night.

Karaoke takes place on a Wednesday at a bar that has underground bands play there on the weekends.

Lately no bands play there.

I assume because the gas prices and the depression have hit Youngstown hard and people can’t afford to go to schools, or even care about what bands come.

Karaoke is the only busy day the bar has anymore.

The people who go to karaoke aren’t the same crowd that goes to the underground shows. It consists of college kids, punks, has-been preppies, white trash, and the locals in the neighborhood.

You can tell when it is a local because the person will be missing some teeth, dressed in Wal-Mart clothes, and half the time on crack.

I sat down at the bar and ordered a BV and Coke.

The bartender brought it over; he’s this tall guy, yells a lot, funny, and a damn good bartender.

I looked around while I was there.

Noticed a lot of people were wearing costumes.

There were females wearing pointy-toed shoes, jeans with thrift-store skirts on top, strange blouses I don’t how to describe, and Pat Benatar hair.

There were guys wearing suits, completely decked out in punk outfits even though they were rich kids, and a lot of kids had scarves on even though they were inside a building.

Nobody really talks to me at that bar.

I’ve pissed a lot of people off there.