I'd run out of bleach and decided to go to the Dollar General Store to pick up some more on Sunday. I was never so glad to see Citizen Jim as that day, since I needed help carrying twenty jugs of Clorox up the stairs to my apartment. It was storming, the rain falling as if dumped from buckets off the roof above our heads, while lightning forked and glowed in the distance like a million-watt spotlight.

Over the crash and rumble of thunder, Citizen Jim shouted, "You don't need to be worrying about your goddamn bleach addiction right now!" as soon as I asked him to help me. "We got other problems and they're ALL YOUR FAULT just like EVERYTHING ELSE BAD that happens to me, you miserable BITCH!"

I would like to say this outburst surprised me. But. I just pointed to the door of my apartment, a signal for Jim to come inside with me, and made a mental note to get the bleach out of my car later. The wind was gusting at such speeds that the rain felt like needles and making our ways to the door was like trying to push through a semisolid wall.

Once inside, I rushed around my living room closing windows as the vertical blinds danced around me from the strong winds outside.

"Can you stand still for one goddamn second and let me tell you something?" Citizen Jim asked, wringing his hands. Water dripped off of him and formed a puddle around his bare feet as it hit the floor. He looked terrified.

I stopped in mid-step. "What's wrong, Precious Lamb?" I asked.

"Oh, it's just awful! I know I blamed you for it outside, but this is all Martin's doing!" he said.

"Let me go and turn off my computer while this storm is so bad," I said, "and then you can tell me what's going on."

"Your computer?!" he yelped. "Don't touch that thing! Not until I tell you the danger you could be in!"

"You can tell me in a second!" I said. "But I don't want my modem getting fried."

I ran into my office and shut down my computer before unplugging my surge protector from the wall outlet and removing the phone line from the modem line. I didn't dare tell Citizen Jim that I'd spent most of the day transferring files to a new Gentlemen Callers web site on a whole new free web server, as the NetFirms servers had crashed earlier in the day. It was clear to me that the Gentlemen Callers web presence might very well be cursed in some way. But if he knew his shrine had been inaccessible to the general googling public for even five minutes, Citizen Jim would kill me quick.

I walked back into the living room and said, "Now. Tell me what happened."

"Well, this all started when Martin was wanting to make a CD of every cover version he could find of the song 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' by Jimmy Buffett. He got on that damned Kazaa and had about twenty downloads going at once since we've got the cable connection at the store. While he was waiting for the songs to finish, he checked his e-mail and clicked a link inside a message from someone he didn't even know!"

"That idiot—doesn't he know about all the viruses and worms being spread out there?" I asked.

Just then, my cat, Mister Meme, crawled out from under the couch and shot off toward my bedroom, screaming, "You'll never get me in that carrier, Mama! I don't care how many worms I have or what you try!"

"So what happened?" I asked Citizen Jim. "Did the computer at the bookstore get a virus?"

"WORSE!" he said, staring at me with wide, terror-filled eyes as his teeth chattered against his fingernails. "I was standing there, and we both ended up watching the curséd video stream! I'm sure you've heard about it by now, as much of your life as you spend on those conspiracy theory web sites."

I shrugged. "What's the video stream of?"

"It's just horrifying! There's a girl sitting in a library or something, and she looks a little like your old girlfriend Melinda—that made me scream and cover my eyes even before I knew about the curse. And this girl, she's singing way, way off-key into a web cam, just butchering some song so badly you can't even tell what it is. Then—"

I felt my knees buckle, and I slumped to the floor. "And then some guy comes up behind her and whacks her on the head with a book and she falls off her chair?"

Citizen Jim screamed. "You watched it?!"

I nodded slowly, tears streaming down my face. "I watched it over and over and laughed harder and harder each time it played. O god ! Now what?"

"Apparently, a day after you watch the video stream, your MP3 player will open up on its own and start playing the official song of the Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential campaign!"

"Which is?" I asked, hoping for something funky and retro and ultimately wrong, like "The Second Time Around" by Shalamar, but preparing myself for the worst. I already knew that if I had to hear even two notes of a song like "Centerfield" by John Fogerty in my own home because of George Bush, I would leave this country I love and never look back.

"The new Bush-Cheney campaign song is 'Cosmic Dancer' by T. Rex. Twenty-four hours after you watch the curséd video stream, that song plays even if you don't have a file of it on your computer! It plays even if you don't have an MP3 player, and even if you don't have your computer turned on! And then, right while 'Cosmic Dancer' is playing, you get a call from the FBI and they tell you to vote for Uncle George during the general election in November, or else!"

"Or else what? Nobody'll ever make me vote for that squinty-eyed, monkey-faced, jug-eared, oil-crazy little warmongering, environment-raping, poor people-hating son of a —"

Citizen Jim clamped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. "Don't talk like that, Stimpy! Especially if you've seen the curséd video stream! You're marked now for a fate you can't control!"

"But—" I started.

Citizen Jim covered his face with his hands and yelled, "Ah hell fire, Stimpy! Face it: now you're curséd, too! AAAAAAUUUUUGH! If this curse spreads, we'll have four more years of mayhem and disaster in the White House! The country won't survive it! People like you and me will all end up being put on boats to Australia while the most powerful and wealthy will stay here and turn every square mile of our vast nation into a gated golf course community—just like England!"

I shot him a confused look at this declaration, but he was so shaken up that I decided to let it go until a better time. "Isn't there any way to break the curse?" I asked.

"When did you see the curséd video stream?" he asked.

"Late last night," I said.

"If twenty-four hours haven't passed, then you have time!" he shouted. "As long as people know not to answer the phone while 'Cosmic Dancer' is playing, the curse can't spread and we'll all be saved! You just need to put the link to that stream on the Gentlemen Callers site with a warning and e-mail the GC link to everyone you know! Do it now!"

"But the lightning!" I wailed at the ceiling.

Before I could think of a way out of it, Citizen Jim had wrapped his hairy arms around me and was carrying me to my office as I kicked and fought him with every step he took.

He slammed me down into the chair at my desk and said, "Screw the lightning and get busy! If you get that call, I know you won't vote for G.W. like the FBI is gonna tell you to. And then they'll put you in jail forever and there won't be anyone to update that idiotic Gentlemen Callers site! If that happens, I'll make sure you know what being sorry you were ever born is all about!"

He stood behind me the whole time I worked, shouting for me to hurry up and telling the storm outside to please just go and fuck itself until I was through.

Finally, I uploaded the page containing a link to the video stream and e-mailed everyone I knew. I hurriedly shut down the computer and unplugged it, thanking God for sparing my modem and vowing that I would never try to use my machine during a storm ever again.

As Jim and I left my home office, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. That's when my WinAmp player opened on its own and started playing "Midnight at the Oasis" by Maria Muldaur. I took off running through the rain, straight toward the lightning and thunder, as I knew I would be in trouble now.

——————

The Curséd Video Stream

(Safe to view. But don't even answer the phone
while "Cosmic Dancer" by T. Rex is playing!)