How to Know
Whether the Voice
Around You, Promising Unspeakable Pain, Is
Reciting 50 Cent Lyrics
or Truly Threatening
Your Life.
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1
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Instance Where the Person Is Probably
Reciting 50 Cent Lyrics
You notice him at an Internet café, seated next to you in a wicker chair upholstered with cushions depicting various "cat fiestas." His loud, lyrical threats have an escalating and lyrical flow that crescendoes with your colon squidging, but it's clearly just a 50 Cent song: once he locates his website he falls silent, furiously taps at the keyboard, and waits for the payment-confirmation message that heroically materializes from the Internet's ineffable matrix of ones and zeros.
Instance Where the Person May Truly Be
Threatening Your Life
Seated next to you at an Internet café, he introduces himself as a freshly terminated computer-lab monitor, then hands you a sooty, collated packet entitled "DOS and Don'ts." He then advises you to pay the same kind of respect to the C++ mouse pad that you would want given to you. You laugh dismissively, telling him that there is no C++ mouse pad. His ensuing tirade lyrically warns of impending danger, but consistently fails to mention how he will explode northern New Jersey with a series of triple-platinum albums, then make it into a parking lot for his Hummers, 300-karat tanks, and DMX's impounded straight-pipe Harley-Davidsons, which, incidentally, have always run on Haterade.
2
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Instance Where the Person Is Probably
Reciting 50 Cent Lyrics
He is near the edge of the subway platform, rhythmically tapping his iPod against his waist. His words are surreal in their violence, but it's likely he's parlaying the lyrics of 50 Cent—Jamaica, Queens' realest son—to vent his frustration with a delayed train. He looks longingly into the mouth of the tunnel, searching for the glow of a train's twin headlamps.
Instance Where the Person May Truly Be
Threatening Your Life
He is near the edge of the subway platform, rhythmically tapping his iPod against his waist while staring at you with the "twin headlamps" of his dilated, skittering pupils. You look away, learning the quick lesson that grown men are not as easy to stare down as your diabetic cat. When you look up again, you notice that he has abandoned the playful "urban pantoum" style commonly employed by 50 Cent, in favor of a more muscular, word-economized bull charge.
3
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Instance Where the Person Is Probably
Reciting 50 Cent Lyrics
You notice he is wearing a smock and a hairnet, and is wiping down a sneezeguard at an Old Country Buffet.
Instance Where the Person May Truly Be
Threatening Your Life
He notices you snaking your grubby hands beneath the sneezeguard to collect the warmth from the heat lamp, as if your filthy hands were smores, and the heat lamp a narcotizing holiday fire.
4
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Instance Where the Person Is Probably
Reciting 50 Cent Lyrics
He is bobbing his head in an elevator, headphones crackling with the syrupy, addictive hooks of 50 Cent.
Instance Where the Person May Truly Be
Threatening Your Life
He is bobbing his head in an elevator, headphones crackling with the syrupy, addictive hooks of 50 Cent, while helping Ted Nugent load a flaming woodrasp into his crossbow, and has himself just finished cinching an ammunition belt made of the teeth of former Styx frontman Tommy Shaw. He is shaking his head at you.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
- - - -
How to Know Whether the Voice Around You, Promising Unspeakable Pain, Is Reciting 50 Cent Lyrics or Truly Threatening Your Life By Tony Antoniadis
Tuesday List Terrificness: War on Terror Edition
The Exploding Boy By Nick Parker
If Henny Youngman Had Played Hamlet By Michael Fowler
Why I Am Leaving the Troupe By Brian Sack
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