When you think about it, life is just a series of decisions. Most of them are completely banal and easily forgotten, and some have the ability to stick with you for years. If you’ve behaved honorably, that can be a heartening reminder of your past, and if you haven’t, you may find yourself in my shoes. I am using this platform to admit that I was the guy who poisoned the beer supply on the cover of Municipal Waste’s 2007 album “The Art of Partying,” for which I am deeply ashamed.
Back then I was living next door to a group of crossover punks. The fact that they had been making my life a living hell with their killer riffs, gnarly skateboarding tricks, and literal nonstop partying is no excuse, but I was waking up at five in the morning for my job at an electronics component distribution facility. One day, bleary-eyed and mad with sleep deprivation, I broke into a nearby nuclear power plant and stole a mysterious barrel with a skull and crossbones on it. What happened after I added the strange green liquid to my neighbor’s beer has haunted me ever since.
The chaos that ensued was otherworldly, and the thought of it chills my bones to this day. It was a vomit-soaked, blood-drunk orgy of anthropophagous hysteria; the likes of which the world had never seen, and hopefully never will again. Seven dead and two institutionalized with no hope of recovery. I was never suspected, but imprisonment would be a relief compared to the staggering guilt I have lived with for nearly two decades. In some ways, I wish I had been torn limb from limb by one of the nightmarish beasts borne of my selfish and cowardly decision, at least then I wouldn’t be the guilt-ravaged shell of a man at the helm of this shameful missive.
I write this to you, dear reader, not for your pity, anger, or disgust (though you are wholly entitled to feel all of these,) and I certainly do not intend this as a righting of my horrific misdeed. One glance at the macabre result of my sins brandishing that album cover is more than enough to conclude that that could never be possible. I simply ask that you learn from my story, and think twice before your actions haunt you forever. I may not be kept awake by the sick shredding and beer-fueled calls of my thrashing neighbors any longer, but the torment of my guilty thoughts is by no means a welcome substitute.