#332 Loser- Chuck Palahniuk
It’s Zeta Delta pledge week and as is tradition, the
fraternity brothers all get dressed in ZD t-shirts, goes to a taping of the Price
is Right and—of course—eats tabs of Hello Kitty blotter acid.
One of them gets selected as a contestant and wins his way
on stage. Just when the acid kicks in, he has to try and make sense of what
exactly is going on:
“They make you spin this doohickey so it rolls around. You
have to match a bunch of different pictures so they go together perfect. Like
you’re some white rat in Principles of Behavioral Psychology 201, they make you
guess which can of baked beans costs more than another. All that fuss to win
something you sit on to mow your lawn.”
Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Price is Right—and
like this kid, most people of my generation know it from days we are home sick
from school—knows that too many details of the game are off. That’s ok though,
lets just say this is a satire on all televised TV game shows. In any case,
this college kid, nearly spinning off the planet on acid, makes it all the way
to the Showcase Showdown (trademarked I’m sure).
“It’s just you and the old granny wearing the sweatshirt
from before just somebody’s regular grandma, but she’s lived through world wars
and nuclear bombs, probably saw all the Kennedys get shot and Abraham Lincoln,
and now she’s bobbing up and down on her tennis shoe toes, clapping her granny
hands and crowded by supermodels and flashing lights while the big voice makes
her the promise of a sport-utility vehicle, a wide-screen television, a floor
length fur coat.”
“And probably it’s the acid, but it’s like nothing seems to
add up.” Nope, sure as shootin’ it don’t.
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