The Seven Deadly Sins

by Corey Taylor

  So you see, this feeling of envy permeates us all. I am sure most of you would be very upset if I accused you of being dirty, stinky sinners, almost as sure as I am that you are all dirty, stinky sinners, but not because of envy. We all fight off bouts of boring inner botulism that threaten the sweetbreads of our soul, but wanting more and wanting it better than before is no reason to throw out last night’s chicken yet. It makes no difference to me how you feel, really. I know where my moral limits lie. Envy comes with the territory, and if you want to lose sleep over shit you cannot control, go right ahead. Sorry, I have an allergy to stupidity. So I spend a lot of time sneezing, especially in airports. I go through tons of Kleenex. That is why I am angry with you people. You make me sneeze. Stop being stupid!

  You would not bother me so much if you were not so envious of idiotic tool bags like Nicole Richie and Tila Tequila. These people make armpit farts seem classy. They are sprayed all over TMZ and Us Weekly like cold jizz in a public bathroom. They are hardly glamorous, have no fucking talent whatsoever, and serve no real purpose other than to make us feel bad about not being them. They remind me a lot of the dried remnants of rogue piss that collects and creates the orange crust around the bolts on a bachelor’s toilet: As soon as you find yourself with that problem, you have made a filthy mess and it is going to take a long time to come clean. There are genuine superstars in this world that could not give a dried deer turd whether or not they are in People or the Enquirer. I am still trying to figure out who in the hell this Heidi Montag person is and why I should give a red shit or even why I know her damn name. Apparently she is a singer. Apparently she got fucking married. And apparently all you people cared. I still do not have the faintest clue. I know she is blonde (until it is no longer stylish), I know she has a mouth a train could drive through, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I do not find her appealing in the slightest. I do not envy her life at all. But some of you do. Why would you envy anyone who looks like a stunt double at the Preakness?

  Is it the money? You can make money, kids. Even people living on the street make money. That is not that difficult. Hell, I knew a dude named Smiley who did nothing but collect bottles and cans and bum spare change from the moment he woke until the moment he finally slept. He had a fucking house and a high-end Lexus. So do you envy the money? Do you think if you are famous you are automatically wealthy? Nothing could be further from the truth. I am slightly more famous than most and I make a decent living in my tax bracket, but I am far from wealthy. I cannot yet buy the things I want to buy. But once I am incredibly rich, I will have these things, like an island, a houseboat, another island. . .and Wyoming. But I am still famous. Several of you reading this book know who I am. Some of you might think I am the gay porn star Corey Taylor. I am deeply flattered! But no...

  By the same token, is it the fame? Do you envy them for their relative notoriety? Do you wish you could walk into a restaurant and get a table immediately, even if you still have to pay full price? That is not a very good reason either. First of all, most famous people are secretly angry about being famous. They do not like being bothered just because you recognize who they are, even though they would be hotter under the designer collar if you did not recognize them. Yeah, they hate being famous, until they are not famous anymore. Then they just hate you. Having said that, I have to tell you fame is not all it is cracked up to be. I am the kind of guy who is still surprised when anyone recognizes me, but there are definitely times when it sucks, like walking through the mall when you have to piss really bad, knowing there are five or six thirteen-year-olds following your every move. You feel like you have been tagged by National Geographic.

  So what is it you envy about these scags? Do you envy their looks? Jesus, Howard, Fine, Howard, and Christ, some of these people look misshapen. Others look like skeletons. The rest are too weird to really get a bead on. There is that guy from the Twilight movies who looks like Count Chocula had a baby with Frankenberry. There is Ashlee Simpson—oh, excuse me, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. She looks like a cross between a chipmunk and a rat attack. There is the “basic hot” brigade, people like Jessica Simpson and Gwen Stefani. Why do you envy them—because a couple of fucking cheerleaders did something other than wind up working at Hooters? We have stopped giving adulation to the truly talented and started giving it to the truly average in the hope that by lowering the bar, we ourselves might be eligible for the fame and glory. Maybe that is why all we do is clamor and cling to their coattails and cuffs. We might just be them some day.

  Hell, it may not be that far off. American Idol does huge numbers in the first few weeks and the last few weeks, which means two things: We all want to see the winners in the end but we also want to scoff at and enjoy the losers who get ripped to shreds in the beginning. I have seriously never seen an episode of American Idol past the first two shows of every season. It is sadism at its greatest: the pointing and the laughing as, one by one, these brave and cocksure hopefuls make and snake their way around a line that might as well get them into Disneyland, waiting hours and hours for a thirty-second chance to maybe make it onto the next half of the show. What they show you is a condensed version with lots of highlights you can chuckle and feel good about, because if you think about it too long, you will realize you are a fucking asshole for doing so. What they do not show you are the hours these people spent waiting and how they got more and more nervous and probably threw up a couple different times. Here is some perspective: The same people who laughed at William Hung most likely bought his fucking album. So sit in that shit.

  If sins were a Broadway play, these seven would play out as such. Anger would be the high-energy, high-stepping opening number. Vanity would be the duet between the leading stars, all in spotlight with no one else on stage. Lust would be the “orgy” number. Greed would be the solo number for the villain. Gluttony would feature way too much dancing. Sloth would be another boring ballad. All of this would have a lot of red and black-light spots shining, velvet curtains flying around from the jet engine fans blowing shit all over, and glittery staircases that are a little too high and lead nowhere. The songs would seem a little risqué, the dancer would show a little too much pussy and cock, and the marquee names attached to the project would be the musical equivalent of Spam and nutmeg.

  Envy’s number would be the only shining star in the show, because it would go completely over people’s heads. It would have to be the duet between the villain and the hero, but it would slowly morph into an ensemble piece that involves everyone and it would have to be written in such a way that you would not know who was who because both the villain and the hero suffer the “sin” of envy. The villain envies the hero because he gets the girl. The hero envies the villain because the villain does whatever he wants. The girl envies the villain because he gets to be bad. The chorus line envies the core cast because they get their names on the playbill. The dancers envy the chorus line because they do more than just dance. Meanwhile the audience envies everyone on the stage because they are in a Broadway show. So envy would have to be the closing number because it would be the one theme that ties us all together at the end of the night. That is the time of the day when envy hits you where you live. We all go back to where we came from, and the whole time we are wondering what everyone else is doing, envying the mystery of their exploits. It is no mystery; our fantasies are always greater than the sum of all their realities. But we still pine for their lives while next door your neighbor pines for yours, and so on and so on.

  We all do it. We all feel it. We all deal with it. It is a tie that binds all different kinds. So here is my question: If this is a concept that we all experience and we all let bring out the best and worst in ourselves, how can it be a sin? Remember: Sin equals bad, and if you are a sinner, you are a bad person. So are you? Do you consider yourself a person of ill intent? Here is something to think about: A villain is nothing more than someone who is convinced that he or she is right. We have always been two halves making one wh
ole. We have both dark and light sides. Anyone who has an eye and a handle on both is just a little further ahead than the rest of us. And that is someone I envy most of all.

  chapter 8

  Greedy Little Pigs

  Mmmmmm. . .Greed. Sweet, indulgent, creamy greed: more, more, more for me, Me, ME. It is as benign as season tickets and as intricate as a Ponzi scheme. It has driven men and women to commit horrendous acts of selfish atrocity, like crushing one another in a mall, scrounging for Cabbage Patch Kids, Beanie Babies, or the latest PlayStation. In short, it can and will make you insane. Sadly, it is not like Christmas: It comes more than once a year and no one is greedy for socks, except Wembly from Fraggle Rock, who does not count because he is a puppet and, therefore, not real. Then again it could have been Gobo; I get all my puppets mixed up sometimes.

  Greed is the urge to own and obtain every action figure on the planet. Greed is the needle in the back of your neck that pushes you to add extra zeroes to your own bankroll check at the office. Greed is the never-ending search for a completion of self that, sadly, may never come. It is in all of us, and it is inevitable. It is wealth and stuff and class and holdings and everything else that spins the head from time to time. There is a very serious problem with greed at the moment, but we will get to that later. Let’s do some background and figure this out before we go any further, shall we?

  Greed is a very special sin on this list because in a lot of ways, without greed, some of the other sins would not exist. Think about envy—what is envy but being so greedy you want someone else’s shit? Gluttony is just greed for a particular thing, be it food or otherwise. Lust is an all-consuming greed for sex at all times; even vanity is a sort of greed for the flesh, wanting only to be the most beautiful creature known to man and Ted Koppel. Without the others, greed could stand on its own, a self-fulfilling sensation. But without greed, a lot of these supposed sins could not get off the runway.

  Maybe that is the reason it comes first on so many lists of the deadly sins. It is certainly the most powerful and yet it is the most esoteric. It is not pure emotion like anger; it is not a physical rapture like lust. It is not easily recognized like sloth or vanity. But greed, when not kept in check, can warp the very Oak of Man more crookedly than all the waters of the world.

  So, having said that, I am a greedy fuck.

  I want it all, and I have no qualms about admitting or even embracing it. I want to have more money than God. I want to do every little thing that comes to mind. I want to write and star in a major motion picture. I want to be the biggest-selling musical artist of all time. I want to own land and have cool shit like compounds and nightclubs. I want to be feared and revered because of power and excellence. Shit, even writing this book is an example of my greed; sure, it has been a dream since I was a kid, but I am greedy enough to want to be successful at it. So it comes down to semantics, where one man’s greed is another man’s ambition, and I have never seen ambition on a sin list yet.

  I understand the consequences of being driven into the ground by this acumen. But I also know that greed has another side to its coin. Greed can push people to be and do their utmost best, ultimately achieving success and renown for ingenuity and innovation. It can cause a revolution; it could cure cancer. It can bring us screaming into the millennium with advances and hurtling toward the sunshine with breakthroughs. It can open the flood gates to a host of different ways we can all get ahead in this crazy, kooky Jetsons world we are living in right now.

  All because some guy wants the money that the patents will bring in.

  Nothing wrong with that, people, nothing at all wrong with that. It takes something special to get us humans off of our asses and disengaged from episodes of House long enough to heal the world, and I am here to tell you that it is not always charity and good will. Sometimes the only reason to show up to the award show is the fucking goodies bag, you see the metaphor? Now granted, some people work tirelessly to effect change in this world purely for the joy of bringing light into the very darkness that barks at our doorsteps. But somewhere, deep down, a lot of them want something. Most of us, I posit, are spurred on by a vicious little vibe called the Urge.

  The Urge is the voice in all of us that has a bottomless pit for a soul and all the free time it could ever need. It feeds on the longings we try to keep quiet and it bolsters the mindset that cannot live without our heart’s desires. It is located right next to your cerebral cortex, lying in wait for those opportune moments when it can spring into action and sell the brain on a simple little tagline:

  More, more, more for me, Me, ME. . .

  But does this make it a sin? Does this make it deadly? I do not believe so. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am assured that this sin in particular makes my point. We are all greedy in some way. We do not all subscribe to the same neo-Christian doctrines, and yet we all feel the brunt of the same human traits. So if being greedy is just another way of being human, then the righteous are saying that being human is a sin. I dare them to say that shit to my face.

  I have a really great argument against “greed is a sin” dog shit. Have you ever eaten one single M&M? Hmm? Have you ever used just one single square of toilet paper? Have you ever limited yourself to just one ketchup packet? Have you ever slept more than your allotted government-recommended eight hours a night? Well, not only have you been a glutton and a sloth (allegedly), you have been greedy.

  On behalf of my fellow M&M lovers everywhere, I would like everyone who thinks like that to kindly go fuck themselves. Greed is just the genetic need to acquire, and that has been going on since we moved into frickin’ caves: “We need grass on the floor, and it has to match the moss on the walls.” We are hunter/gatherers, and if you did not bring back the bigger brontosaurus, you had to go club your neighbor to death and take his.

  Leave it to religion to make greed a sin, by the way. I know how it started. In its heyday (i.e., the Middle Ages), the Church was not only the seat of spiritual mercy and grandeur but also the place to obtain an education. Colleges were built by the clergy and, more importantly, for the clergy. In order to attend, you had to become a priest. Most commerce was presented within spitting distance from the Church’s doorstep, and usually the vicars got a little kickback for their trouble. So imagine its dismay if someone came along who was wealthy and a little bit ahead of the curve in the smarts department—Q.E.D.: “He or she is guilty of the sin of greed!”

  What a crock. Was the Church not greedy when they kept education for themselves? More to the point, are religions not guilty of greed and vanity when they say their “god” is the only real god and their teachings are the only real teachings, and they try to hoard all the followers by decrying the other side? It is horseshit; any religion that preaches one-sided doctrines is not religion at all but a fucking recipe for control and hate. I am talking about Christianity, Islam, and any other way of life that tries to control life itself. The zealots of the world are using faith as a race to see who can sell the most holy cookies because whoever has the most followers wins. They combine scripture and conspiracy theory to fashion a mandate that will attract the human flies to the sticky trap. We are the equivalent of religious capital—nothing more. When those who are leading the masses are doing so not because they are teaching but because they are obsessed about winning, you can see that greed can corrupt the most ardent and proves that no one is above reproach. We are human: We are flawed, and saying that some people are not culpable is blasphemous to the human condition.

  On a lighter note, I love movies!

  I have several thousand DVDs in a room I call the Vault. It is air conditioned to maintain the proper temperature because my comic books are also in there. The movies are alphabetized, followed by any titles that start with a number. The room has several shelves that encircle its circumference. It now has a lock on the door because my friends borrow movies and never bring them back. Hey, fuckface, I’m not Blockbuster. I will break your fucking hands and legs.
Bring back my copy of I Spit on Your Grave, Mike!

  I have so many movies that many are still in the plastic. I have so many movies that I forget what movies I have and I rebuy them and end up giving the old ones away. I have so many movies that I sometimes keep the multiple copies because there are different versions. I have around twelve different versions of Reservoir Dogs: I have the regular one, all the different colored tenth anniversary editions, the special edition Gas Can package that was released for the fifteenth anniversary, and the Blu-ray version. If I am anything, I am a collector and an enthusiast. But here is my question: What is the difference between greed and collecting? Where does fandom end and fanaticism begin? Is it greed if all my movies are alphabetized?

  We are all guilty of some greed. Think about those times when you need a penny at the convenience store, and you know you have a penny in the pocket of your skinny jeans and you take one from the penny plate anyway. Think about those times you were strolling through the grocery store and you took a few pieces from the Brach’s candy display. You guys do remember Brach’s candy, right? No? Fraggle Rock neither? Damn, I am getting old.

  You can call it stealing, but I call it greed. You did not need that penny or that delicious candied root beer barrel, but you took it anyway. You wanted to have it so no one else could. That makes you a bad person. Not really, but it does make you human. We all want not only our fair share but whatever is left in the till as well. It is like eating all the fries at the bottom of the bag when you know some of them were in your wife’s order of fries as well. The whole human race is trying desperately to get more for their money, the spiritual super-saver deal so to speak. Is that greed? Not necessarily. You do not have to be greedy to stand in line for a discount. But the base measure of wanting and needing is in that very concept of necessity. Bring a man a glass of water and he will drink it, no questions asked. Bring a man a shot of whiskey and he will complain over whether it is scotch or bourbon. Personally, I prefer rye, but that is just me.