In Which All of Williamsburg Is Grey

Curing Your Seasonal Depression

by Alex Carnevale

Will called me up yesterday asking how to cure his seasonal depression. Despite subsisting entirely on sunshine like Tara Reid, Will spends his winters in the northeast. This is entirely a mistake. He spends the whole season sulking and complaining his sexual partners are wan and ghostly. Because there are no tanning salons in Williamsburg, he never even gets to see a waxed up miley. Brooklyn is the saddest place in the world in December, which is why I try to stay out of the borough.

Further uptown, where pregnancies past and present haunt the streets, stores are empty or near to becoming so. I took an elevator down into a Circuit City that was going out of business, and when I arrived, all there was left was red-shirted employees in a circle with their mouths open wide, eyes rolled back to the ceiling. And when I went into Burger King to check out those tiny burgers, a prayer circle had erupted near the jungle gym.

It’s no surprise that people grow angry and bitter after paying money that will go to fuel Chrysler and General Motors’ dying, pathetic last days. But a cult is not the answer! Trust me, I’ve read a lot of websites, perhaps more than you can reasonably contemplate, about the subject.

The easy answer sedates the doubt that’s always on the edge of our perception. For example:

Meow, L. Ron. Me. Ow.

Before jumping onto a train that will end with your wife, Katie Holmes, conceiving an incubus child that will have to be destroyed, know all the facts.

You see, Stan, there is a reason for people feeling sad and depressed. An alien reason. It all began 75 million years ago. Back then there was a galactic federation of planets which was ruled over by the evil Lord Xenu.

Xenu thought his galaxy was overpopulated, and so he rounded up countless aliens from all different planets, and then had those aliens frozen.

The frozen alien bodies were loaded onto Xenu’s galactic cruisers, which looked like DC-8s, except with rocket engines. The cruisers then took the frozen alien bodies to our planet, to Earth, and dumped them into the volcanoes of Hawaii.

The aliens were no longer frozen, they were dead. The souls of those aliens, however, lived on, and all floated up towards the sky. But the evil Lord Xenu had prepared for this.

Xenu didn’t want their souls to return. And so he built giant soul-catchers in the sky.

The souls were taken to a huge soul brain-washing facility, which Xenu had ALSO built on Earth.

There the souls were forced to watch days of brainwashing material which tricked them into believing a false reality.

Xenu then released the alien souls, which roamed the earth aimlessly in a fog of confusion.

At the dawn of man, the souls finally found bodies which they can grab onto. They attached themselves to all mankind, which still to this day causes all our fears, our confusions, and our problems.

Stan: I wrote that um, our followers shouldn’t fly in DC-8s anymore because they’re too much like Xenu’s evil cruisers.

President: Yes, of course! So wonderful!

Stan: And I wrote that the evil Lord Xenu was recently broken out of galactic jail.

President: Yes, of course!

Stan: And best of all, I wrote that all the Scientologists should no longer have to pay money to belong.

President: What?

Stan: I realized that to really be a church, we can’t charge people for help.

President: What are you, stupid?! Then how do we make money from those people?!

Stan: … Well, it’s not about the money, it’s about the message, right?

President: Waait a minute, whoa, whoa! You don’t actually believe this crap, do you? Dummy! Brainwashed alien souls? E-meters and thetan levels?? Those people out there buy that crap and I thought YOU were smart enough to see what was really going on!

Stan: But you said that there were-

President: What’s better than telling people a stupid story and having them believe you?! Having them PAY you for it, stupid!

Stan: But then, why me? Why do you need me to write something so badly?

President: Because if those people all think you’re the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, then they’ll all buy your new writings, and you and I together will make three million dollars!

Stan: Three million dollars?

President: That’s how the scam works! But this is a scam on a global scale! Do you fucking get me now?!

Stan: Yeah. Yeah, I get you.

“Cellphone’s Dead (Eileen Allien Remix)” – Beck (mp3)

“Blue Clouds” – Daniel Johnston (mp3)

“Filmed In Front of a Live Studio Audience” – United Nations (mp3)

he is our prophet now

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

Ellen Page: looking good girl.

That long train you take.

I generally have nothing to complain about.