Last Rites Presents: Ask 2 Idiots

Welcome to another transformative edition of… Last Rites Presents: Ask 2 Idiots!

In ancient times, the “village idiot” was a well-respected figure that played an important role not only in day-to-day life, but also in Victorian and Elizabethan literature, particularly on the stage, where idiots often knew secrets that the audience and cast didn’t. That makes the idiot an overlooked and very crucial person. So crucial, in fact, that there are reportedly extremely rare and cabalistic scriptures buried deep within ancient ruins out there “somewhere” that indicate that it’s actually the idiots who stand to inherit the Earth, not the stupid meek. Bottom line: idiotness is where it’s at, and we two idiots are clearly at the very top of the heap.

I was pregnant and got a flat tire in a snowstorm. Ask 2 Idiots pulled over to the side of the road and told me how to change the tire from the comfort of their car. ~ A fan

One might ask, “Why would two idiots be sitting around on the internet fielding questions in such an impressive manner? And what, pray tell, qualifies them to do so in the first place?” Unfortunately, those are really stupid questions that we refuse to answer, so please take a moment to talk to the hand. Any hand, really.

Suffice to say, we—Captain & Manny-O-War—are extremely handsome and extremely intelligent idiots who are deserving of accolades because we have agreed to take time away from our exceedingly valuable schedules to field your mildly interesting (and often downright annoying, frankly) questions. Not all your questions, mind you; we’re idiots, not superhuman. We’ll pick the three most compelling Qs, reveal life-changing answers, and we’ll do so whenever the gosh-darn-heck we feel like it from this day forward until the very end of time, which is probably pretty soon, tbh.

The rules: there are no rules, you idiots! We’ll give life advice, opinions on virtually anything, homework answers, and terrifying and/or sexy predictions for the future. We also specialize in gambling, lucky numbers and astrology. The sky is pretty much the limit. Just don’t ask us to help with your taxes, because we’re both incredibly wealthy and have “people” do that for us.

So, let’s get to it…

Our first question this month comes to us via Heavy Metal. More specifically, from the head goat over at Dark Descent Records, Matt Calvert. For those of you born under a dumpster (aka, all of you), Dark Descent Records releases some of the smoothest modern new age music you can get your filthy hands on, if that new age music happens to sound as if it were created by a gaggle of crusty swamp-beasts battling over a remote control and breaking all the furniture in the house. Mr. Calvert’s question:

Matt: Poseur or Poser? Please be aware your answer may reveal your true identity to the readers.

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Captain: Terrific question, Matt. When I find myself traveling to other countries for various philanthropic work and to cut impressive ribbons for international Arby’s restaurants (yes, they’re restaurants) with a gigantic pair of scissors that airlines no longer allow as a carry-on, I tell everyone I’m from England. Why? Because if I tell them I’m from America, they assume I’m heavily armed and will no longer act natural around me. I already have celebrity standing in the way of my attempts to connect with the common person, I really don’t need a fear element adding to the separation. When they ask why I don’t “sound” British, I tell them it’s because I was a feral child raised in the wilderness.

More to the point, if I send someone a message that reads “Hey poser, have you ever considered smoking a bag of soiled diapers while falling off a shitty building,” it comes across as too aggressive, don’t you agree? “Poseur,” on the other hand, exhibits a level of sophistication that I think better represents a true gentleman such as myself.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to head out to my garage/apartment to remove all the 2-liter jugs of pee resting on the floor of the back seat of my car/bedroom.

Recommended listening: Thrust – “Poseurs Will Die”

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Manny-O-War: First off, this is America. I don’t need to see letters in places where they don’t belong. Not only is it confusing, but it subjects me to completely unnecessary eye strain. Take that shit back to England. Didn’t we kick those extra letters out back in 1776 and then again in 1812? I don’t need to get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome because you put an extra vowel in your insulting word. I bet you also pronounce Target as “tar-shay,” and you probably refuse to eat instant oatmeal because steel cut is sooooooo much fancier. You know what? You people sicken me. You know who isn’t a poser? Me. That’s why I’m keeping it real with you right now and letting you know that French and English styles of spelling are not only stupid, they are detrimental to your health.

Recommended Listening: Whitney Houston – “The Star Spangled Banner”

Our second question comes to us from one of the internet’s most beloved characters, Leila Abdul-Rauf. Leila keeps the toads in Vastum in line with a huge guitar and a terrifying voice. She’s also in Hammers of Misfortune, Cardinal Wyrm, AND makes really wonderful, drifty ambient music under the surprisingly uncreative moniker Leila Abdul-Rauf. Leila asks the 2 Idiots:

Leila: Memphis Elvis, Vegas Elvis or Velvet Elvis?

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Captain: Oh, Vegas Elvis all the way. Mostly because the struggle was real with Vegas Elvis. Memphis Elvis was firing on all cylinders and had women and men fainting with a mere whisper and one swivel of those hips. Vegas Elvis, on the other hand, was functioning like a busted-down Yugo on three tires, so he really had to work for his love. Nothing says “I’ve lost my way” quite like booting a foot-long tuna & peanut butter sub on an entire front row of all-stars who just spent the last 7hrs pumping dimes into a crappy slot machine. But if you caught him on that one special night when all the stars aligned just right, you’d get to witness winded majesty and debacle for the price of one ticket. I think art needs that balance of the beautiful and grotesque to truly be considered great. Plus, Vegas Elvis might’ve actually accepted a 2am invitation to Denny’s for endless pancakes, whereas Memphis Elvis would’ve told you to pound salt.

Velvet Elvis is totally out. The only velvet thing I want in my life is a track suit. Those are sharp. And I guess velvet paintings of large cats aren’t out of the question. Predatory cats, not your Aunt’s cat Smuckers that gets fed seven times a day. I probably wouldn’t say no to a naked lady, either. In real life, but more specifically as a velvet painting. For the artistic complexion. I’m just trying to be honest here. But hey, have a velvet painting of any naked person you want—it’s a free country. Willfully naked is key, though. Willfully naked people or predatory cats. Or predatory cats preying on naked people. That would also be fine. A velvet painting of a predatory cat eating naked people. Or maybe even a predatory cat eating Elvis. Now there’s a Velvet Elvis I wouldn’t mind. He should probably be clothed, though.

Recommended listening: Heavy Load – “The King”

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Manny-O-War: Memphis Elvis. Because when I fuck with BBQ, I like to know it can be dry or wet. I don’t need some asshole from North Carolina telling me what I can and can’t put on my ribs, capice? In Memphis, I can get some barbecued pork and make some sick-ass nachos out of it. You know what else rules about Memphis? It’s cheap as fuck. The income per capita is $21,909/Annum. What a joke, right? It’s like, I’ve got boats that cost more than that. Also, Graceland, which is a dope-ass bachelor pad, is in Memphis. I can go there and hit up some vintage peanut butter supplies and then check out Elvis’s grave, because he was stupid enough to die… On the shitter, no less. What a fucking loser, right?

Recommended Listening: W.C. Handy – “Memphis Blues”

Our last question (plus one extra super bonus question) fell from the Heavens in the form of a kitten with angel wings from an enigmatic personage known as Context Pilgrim from the equally sphinxlike Wild Hunt. If you don’t yet know Wild Hunt, Jack, you ain’t even livin’. (That also applies to all other people not fortunate enough to be named Jack.) Wild Hunt is about to drop a serious banger of a new album entitled Afterdream of the Reveller on April 20th of THIS VERY YEAR through Vendetta Records, and word on the street (aka: the street leading directly into LastRitesville) is that it’s situated very comfortably on Awesome Avenue. Context Pilgrim inquires:

Context Pilgrim: 1) “Permit my conspiracy of catechisms as mere wavering intimations via the blighted lens of retrograde-historical origin and disparate adumbrations of vex”… Roman Numrel III circa 639 BCE

What can we hope to make of the sacrificial liberties of the duly un-noted, or of the ‘last vestiges of the sins of the saved’ for that matter? As Dante might have us pontificate through our own inertia, how might one reply if asked a question which requires not the elucidations of reciprocity? As Gibran adds: ‘What judgement pronounce you upon him who though honest in flesh yet is a thief in spirit?’ — Are those not venerably rhetorical questions, toiling within your esteemed estimations?¿?¿? I implore you, my fellow pilgrims of the contextual frontiers of logos and ethos…

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Captain: I’m sorry, did I just wander into the Genius Bar at my local Macintosh Computer Store? Are you asking what I think happens to the sins of the recently salvated who finally find their merry way into Heaven? I’m pretty sure they just get thrown into a machine that recycles them into general immoralities such as “picturing your algebra teacher naked,” “dropping a couple strokes on the back nine—wink wink, nudge nudge,” or “embezzling enough from your parishioners to afford a brand new Bentley SUV.”

Or maybe you’re asking if I think it’s really possible (or at all fair) to expect a glorious afterlife simply because you say you’re sorry to St. Pete for bonking out of wedlock. Hey, sins happen, folks. I happen to know for a fact that Manny-O-War accidentally killed a newlywed couple in the 90s after careening a go-cart into a hot dog stand over at Pickled Pedro’s Put-Put Paradise and he’s not worried at all about being tormented in fire for eternity. And I’m fairly certain the cops never solved the case! Then again, I think he might also be wrapped up in one of those religions that doesn’t believe in Hell or damnation as long as you don’t eat monkey brains in your lifetime. You’ll have to PM him for the deets.

Recommended listening: Stryper – “Take It To The Cross”

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Manny-O-War: Dante! Don’t even get me started on that pathetic miscreant. Wow, he created a whole bunch of levels of hell. It’s like, shut up already. Jean-Paul Sartre basically owns the shit out of that Italian eggplant with No Exit. And I’m pretty sure Foucault owns him on theories regarding being imprisoned. So, like, take a hike, Dante. Hop on your Vespa and ride off a cliff. Gibran was basically a lame version of Nietzsche. Oh cool, some guy stood on a rock and gave a sermon for 90 pages. Cool. It’s like reading the poor man’s version of Herman Hesse. So, my judgment is against Gibran for being such a little whiny bitch. You know what he stole from my spirit? A whole bunch of fucking time I could have spent being awesome instead of reading his lame-ass pronouncements. I’d rather fuck with Nietzsche and the Ubermensch. And also, Pilgrims are idiots. And not the good kind of idiots—just a bunch of morons who get on boats and go to new places and kill the people that were already chilling out there. Then the pilgrims die horrible deaths because they are morons who didn’t properly prepare for their trip.

Recommended listening: Rolling Stones – “Turd On The Run”

BONUS Q…

Context Pilgrim: 2) Herodutus wrote in the Fifth Century BCE that “the first history was written in the hope of preserving from decay the remembrance of what mankind has been.” Yet if history would be defined as “a story inspired by actual events,” then isn’t mythology at work in our daily lives as “actual events inspired by a story?” Which are we to consider to have greater existential purpose in the collective membrane of neighboring self-hoods?

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Captain: There’s a reason we spend seven hours straight binging on sci-fi shows or dressing as superheroes for comic cons: Reality is completely lame, man. Reality is Truck Nutz and buying fedoras with a phone app and heroes falling to Parkinson’s. Reality is an entity we fight like trapped animals to escape, because reality has become completely terrifying and something that we never ever learn from, no matter how often it unfortunately repeats itself. So I say level the playing field and treat everything as if it’s reality. Anything that leaves the brain and gets out to the public in some written form has the opportunity of eventually becoming true history. Is Cast Away any less real if it teaches someone who finds themselves miraculously and similarly stranded to use a random piece of polyurethane as a raft’s shelter and sail? Didn’t George Orwell write our history when he made up Nineteen Eighty-Four? Make Star Trek: Voyager a truth because it establishes a woman as the ship’s leader during an age when people don’t have the awareness to understand why that might hold a particular significance. Expect to actually turn into Santa if you accidentally scare him and he falls off your roof. And let’s start making more future histories like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Goonies, because I’m really not interested in getting eviscerated for absentmindedly saying “Candyman” five times in front of a mirror at some point in the future.

Recommended listening: Sabbat – “Mythistory”

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Manny-O-War: Herodutus was a pussy. Everybody knows that. He’s basically Rome’s version of Benjamin Franklin—just some asshole that took baths with little boys and gave himself credit for shit he didn’t actually do. It’s like, how can we believe anything he says if he was the one writing it down, right? How’s that even a subjective viewpoint? And, if you want to talk about mythology, well that’s just a bunch of bullshit passed down from people who ate bugs and fucked their relatives. That’s basically how all religion started. People were scared, so they made shit up. “Oh, that ocean is scary, I bet there’s some huge asshole with a pitchfork in it that’s gonna stab me or something.” That’s how people thought back then. Nowadays, I don’t need some mamby-pamby story about a guy on a mountain throwing lightning bolts at people because his immortal wife didn’t shit out enough kids for him.

Recommended listening: Black Sabbath – “Children of the Sea”

Interested in submitting a question? Hit us up on Twitter using the hashtag #Ask2Idiots. Or you can shoot an electronic mission to contactlastrites at gee mail. We will make our selections using a sophisticated algorithm developed specifically for this feature that balances all the really important and cool factors that make great questions irresistible, so make it count.

THANK YOU AND YOU’RE WELCOME for this life-changing and sage advice.

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