The Dollar Store (reference post)

Holy and Sacred Ganesha of Sigma Kappa Alpha Douchebag
By Amy Güth, as read in The Dollar Store Show, June 1st, 2007

Brock, of the Brock, Brodie, and Brandon trinity hit the corner of Clark and Addison Streets with a thud, surprising everyone with the strange empty, bouncing basketball noise his head made when hitting the pavement. Okay, it didn’t surprise the bouncer of the Cubby Bear, the same bouncer who’d just tossed him out on his ass for drunken disorderly, the same bouncer who’d cut four fake Ids in half years ago when Brock was underage.

Hitting the ground so hard, soul and body, the life, the soul, the mojo, the whatever, was suddenly and swiftly knocked the fuck out of Brock. Brock’s soul-being stood and looked around post-Cubs game Clark Street, assuming he had hit the afterlife jackpot, and did a triumphant air-guitar in the hopes of amusing Brandon and Brodie. But Brandon and Brodie kept their attention on the lifeless Brock on the sidewalk with sad eyes and the occasional mumbled “Duuuuuuude is Brock dead and shit?” as they mentally catalogued the phone numbers in Brock’s phone and the Dave Matthews Band Cd's they like to claim if Brock was indeed dead here on the corner of Clark and Addison.

“Dude, that’s shit’s not cool, Bros.” Brock shouted, and punched the exterior wall of the Cubby Bear, because that’s how he’s always dealt with bewilderment, and was surprised to fall through the wall and find himself standing in a crowd of sweaty, drunk beautiful people in a post-Cubs game, drunken haze. Brock stood admiring pecs of Brohams he’d secretly homo-erotically admired for months, and the surgical precision of boob jobs he’d seen cropping up now that sweater season, my friends, was over. This death shit, he though, was pretty fucking sweet.

But, what Brock didn’t know is that his proverbial and literal number was not up just yet. A ghostly plane circled the earth with an otherworldly drill sergeant shoving stand-by soul-mojo into bodies that weren’t supposed to die just yet, but whose soul-mojo was too fucking dumb to realize such a thing and would go live it up in a state of limbo inside the post-game Cubby Bear.

So, on this day, an administrative error in the afterlife bureaucracy had landed none other than Ganesha, Hindu ruler of beginnings, g-d of obstacles, patron of arts and sciences, the one with the blue elephant trunk and the many arms, yes, that Ganesha, right on this spirit-realm cargo plane. As the plane whipped around the ether, with its hard-assed drill sergeant type shoving various soul-beings into various unfinished lives, Ganesha sat quietly, not wanting to stick his blue trunk where it did not belong, but very certain that something really unsavory was about to happen.

The drill sergeant grabbed one of Ganesha’s many arms and screamed, “Soldier! Unfinished life, 3 o’clock! Come on, let’s go, let’s go, move move!” shoving poor, beloved Ganesha out of the plane. Ganesha was in free fall, falling through time and space and thousands of human years when tiny sparkles began to appear on the ground that grew closer and became a thriving, wiggling metropolis and, an instant later, a neighborhood, then a sidewalk, and then, surrounded by EMTs and cops, Ganesha fell into the golf-shirt and khaki-shorts clad body of the lifeless Brock, reviving him instantly. “Oooohhhhhhh. Shit,” Ganesha thought. Indeed enlightenment had just fallen quite literally, right into supreme douchebaggery. This was fucking terrible.

For you see, even the most enlightened and intelligent and all-knowing soul, when dropped into a life to pick-up where it had left off, can only act in the character of the life as it existed. The new soul can add it’s own little touches but it must do so within the capacity of, in this case, Brock the fratboy. Ganesha was, as they say in the afterlife, fucking screwed.

Ganesha-Brock was given a once-over by paramedics and a stern talking-to by police, and sent on his way. The next morning, Ethereal Brock was stuck inside the now-quiet Cubby Bear, grounded there immediately upon opting for it, delighted to haunt it forever, though he’d surely be in for a letdown during off-season, no? Ganesha-Brock, on the other hand, woke rather confused to be craving Hormel chili, Fritos and ranch salad dressing. Feeling the headache from smacking the pavement the night before, not to mention the hangover from Brock’s outrageous drinking bender, Ganesha-Brock stood and shuffled to the bathroom. Peeing, he realized the penis attached to his new body was hilariously tiny and began to laugh. Oh, this reincarnation business always took some getting used to each go-round.

Throughout the day, Ganesha was surprised and irritated to find himself drawn to stupid ideas and actions. Did he really just shout “sit on my face” to a woman leaving a yoga class? Oh, g-d he did. He did! Wait! Wai-wait--- yoga! Yoga, that was it. Yoga would bring Brock’s life and Ganesha’s mojo into tolerable alignment.

He went into the yoga center and set himself up in the class starting in a few minutes. “Are you sure you’re ready for the advanced class?” The receptionist asked. “You’d be way hot with makeup and stuff”, Ganesha-Brock said, to his inner-horror. “Uh, I mean, yeah, the advanced class’ll be fucking sweet. I’ve been doing yoga forever.” Ganesha-Brock cringed and walked into the classroom. He sat and was surprised to see how inflexible Brock’s body was, but making the best of it, Ganesha Brock sat plainly and began to prepare for class with ujai breathing techniques he’d perfected a millennium ago. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm” he chanted loudly and fully. As women entered the classroom, Ganesha-Brock watched them bending to place their yoga mats. “Ohhhmmmmmmmm, mama.” He said to one. “So, yoga’s pretty cool…” to another. Finally, when the instructor came in with her beautifully muscled physique, Ganesha flinched as he blurted “Whoa, if you’re the teacher, just call me hot for teacher! huh, huh huhuh huhhu.” Oh g-d, Brock was worse than Ganesha thought. “Sorry, I’m.. uh, I have tourettes.. I mean, I, I just sometimes, I uh, fuck it, I’m really sorry.”

This was miserable. No way was Ganesha, l-rd of obstacles and beginnings with the blue elephant trunk and many arms, no way was that Ganesha, going to be stuck here like this for the rest of this incarnation.

Wait, Ganesha-Brock thought, I’m muthafuckin’ Ganesha. G-d of obstacles and beginnings! Ganesha with the blue elephant trunk and many arms. Surely I can avoid these outbursts if I placate Brock with something else he’d enjoy to sustain a harmonious balance between his impulses and my enlightenment?

That very night, Ganesha transformed himself into g-d of the fratboys, patron saint of douchebags. The insults mostly stopped once Ganesha-Brock realized that though Brock had only two arms, he, Ganesha had four, and though the extra two arms weren’t visible to anyone else, they could still function. And, so while Brandon and Brodie drank five, Ganesha-Brock drank ten. And, even while double fisting Natty Light in cans, he still had a free, invisible hand or two to slap an ass or throw a passing nerd off balance. His blue trunk, also invisible to the mortal eye, served him with a heightened sense of smell, and he’d sniff out pot stashes, he’d sniff out roofies in cocktails and swoop in, cock-blocking the doser and taking the dosee for himself. He’d sniff out stank cooch and watered down beer. Ganesha-Brock was shooting fish in the proverbial fucking barrel.

Brock’s unaware friends, Brandon and Brodie, in time, noticed small changes creeping into Brock’s life. Like the time they went to Daytona Beach to pick up underage girls and drink themselves silly and Ganesha-Brock rose at sunrise to meditate on the beach. The time he ordered tofu instead of beef, and the very unfortunate time he donned golden bracelets instead of his “trademark” backwards, white baseball cap.

As for Ethereal Brock, he happily haunted the Cubby Bear forever, merrily living it up in his own post-game nirvana. He could, of course, see Ganesha-Brock rising through the ranks and emerging as g-d of the fratboys, patron saint of douchebags and admired his long, hard blue trunk.