WARNING: Infamy at a Pool Hall is a recurring feature that periodically spotlights the myriad vile and contemptible slurs, japes and other utterances heard at the pool hall during our regular Thursday night sessions. Shameful to admit, these are not infamies overheard from other tables! - presumably voiced by lowlifes, who have no better excuse for how to act - but rather, they are remarks spoken loud and aloud exclusively by mouths from among our own regular group of fellows, all of whom to look at you would ordinarily assume would have a little more fucking class than that. The twin demons of pool and beer weave a sad web, one that ensnares even the most upright knights of morality it seems, in this, the tenth in an increasingly appalling series of installments of: Infamy at a Pool Hall.
"Ten in the corner." "Do you have to?"
"Man, this Anchor Steam's a little skunky." "FUCK YOU! I LOVE THE STEAM!"
"Nice shot. That was the shot of the night!" "Okay Nostradamus!"
"That girl with the flower in her hair is nice." "Dude, she's like twelve. You sick fuck." "First she's no way twelve, but second I didn't say I wanted to have sex with her!" "I said 'YOU SICK FUCK.' Are you trying to tell me after all I've known you that that is not an accurate statement?" "Fair point." "Dude, I knew damn well you're no pedophile." "Actually, it'd be 'ephebophile' - a pedophile is sexually into pre-pubescent minors; those minors who have as yet developed no secondary sexual characteristics. Tits like that...assuming she's a minor, I'd be an ephebophile." "Dude, I knew damn well you're no ephebophile." "Thanks, man! That means a lot. Because, I'm really not you know." "I knew you're not." "Damn straight."
"Oooo you were right. This Anchor Steam's a little skunky."
"Actually, that whole pedophile/ephebophile thing. I'll level with you, it's kind of creepy you know so much about it. How often do you get accused?" "Well what can I say, I'm a sick fuck."
"When you can't get by on a wing and a prayer...a leg and a curse will get you there." "Write that one down."
"Zeppelin vs. Stones? I always saw it as more Beatles vs. Stones and then Zep vs. Floyd." "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You know what, that's another thing! I am so sick of this boy-who-cried-'hypocrisy' bullshit! Everyone's so afraid of hypocrisy. You'd rather live your life as a pussy-dick coward saying nothing can be right, nothing wrong - embrace apathy and never take a stand on a damn thing - just so long as you never have to worry about getting hit with that 'hypocrite' charge! Oh no I can't say it's wrong to break a solemn vow I took. I can't say that's wrong. Because some people break that vow, those hypocritical scumbags! Or I can't say 'drugs bad' because then some people say that and later you find - drug habit! Oxycontin! Um. I got news for you: hypocrisy isn't when you state an ideal you believe in, and then later fail to be perfect to that stated ideal. Fucking morons think being human equals hypocrisy! If that were the case, none of us could ever even say out loud what we believe is right. Do you care to tell me we can't tell a thing is wrong? You want to tell me that it's not wrong to make a solemn vow and then shit all over it? Bullshit. It is wrong. Yes, people do it! Yes, it's a common human failing. Guess what? That's why we say it's a fucking failing. Because it is in fact fucking wrong. I'm not for condemning people to the gallows for being human, I don't give a shit about judging motherfuckers. But I tell you it takes either a moron or a last-class intellectual coward to call it hypocrisy when a person has simply stood up for a thing, and fallen devastatingly short. Human? Yes! Scumbag? May be. Hypocrite? No. That's not what hypocrisy is." "Could you sum it all up a little tighter, maybe? I wasn't listening. But it sounded good! Give it to me again in one sentence." "I'll try. Gimme a minute."
"Man, this skunky Steam is still p. d. good." "Actually it tastes shitpissy even when it's fresh." "... You're barefootin' on ice, friend." "Translation?" "It means either 'don't slip', 'put some boots on', or 'step lively or else you're going to end up getting your toes cut off.'" "You know what man, it's people like you who confuse the issue."
"Man, this new Black Keys album is so good you can put ten dollars in the jukebox and still not play all of it." "...doesn't that mean more that it's so long?" "You and your damn precision adjectives. Shoot the damn nine." "Um, I'm solids." "I tell you what, then, you'd have to be a real badass to make that nine-ball shot." "... You know what, it is a pretty sweet shot."
"Hypocrisy is the only sin we have left." "Much better! Succinct."
"So wait. You've said what hypocrisy isn't. What do you say hypocrisy is??" "Dude." "Yeah." "You really just asked me that?" "Well I'd like to hear - it sounds like you've put some thought into this." "Gimme a minute. I need to put some thought into this." "Not too much!"
"I can't believe I won the first three games and then I let you win three in a row." "We're tied." "BULLSHIT we'll see who's tied after this next game!!"
"You know, lightning is invisible in space." "God. What are you talking about now?" "In space, lightning is invisible. We can only see lightning here because of the atmosphere. The visible light is generated by the incandescence of the air molecules superheated by the barrage of charged particles passing through them. In space, there would be nothing to see - completely invisible." "There is no lightning in space." ... [pause] "...how would you know?"
"Okay. Hypocrisy is when you state an ideal, and you advocate that ideal to others, all the while you know damn well you don't even subscribe to it yourself. THAT my friend is detestable. THAT is a hypocrite, and it is worth its bad name. But these douche-tools who self-righteously blubber 'hypocrisy!' when you stand up before the world and the ones you love, and you say what you truly believe is right - when you commit to an ideal that means something to the people around you to whom and with whom you make that commitment, when you have the common decency or the increasingly uncommon courage just to stand up for something that IS good, IS right - only to find that life comes in years later and you find you have wronged? Wronged yourself. Wronged another. Failed in what you knew damn well was the right thing to do. Well give yourself as much shit as you want for that, as long as you do not bitch out and claim what you knew was right is NOT right. Don't stop saying what you did is a wrong thing. Own up to doing wrong. Own up to failing. Own up, maybe, to being a piece of shit even; in your own eyes. In the eyes of the people you let down. Own your own failure: because what you did was wrong. But you weren't a hypocrite to know it was wrong. You weren't a hypocrite to say it was wrong - to stand up for that, before or after. And though you may even be a piece of shit, to fail your own best ideal and to betray what you truly believed - but that's not hypocrisy. That's not what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is a far worse thing than just being a failure at doing what's right. Hypocrisy is a far worse than just being flawed. Hypocrisy is pretending to be moral." ... [long pause] ... "That's all very -" "Wait a sec, one more thing - even a hypocrite is a fuck of a lot better for the world than these spine-tards who refuse to admit a thing can be wrong. Because at least a hypocrite generally advocates in favor of something right even if the son of a bitch isn't in earnest!" ... [much shorter pause] ... "Done?" "Yup." "Will you please shoot the fucking eight ball you fucking hypocrite."
"It's not the fault of the Anchor Steam. I'm willing to testify in court that some other factor is to blame here, because that's not it."
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