User:Captain Carcass/How to:Have no regrets

How to have no regrets

Having no regrets has become an increasingly popular pastime in a country where apathy and shameless self-promotion have replaced restraint and community. As a way to shirk accountability for one’s more egregious infamies, a claim to having no regrets is both convincing and respectable. It demonstrates that if you pretend to disbelieve the gravity, or even the existence, of your crimes, the public will soon follow. Having no regrets also tells people that far from being sorry for what you have done, you would do it again if given the chance, which will frighten others into condoning your effrontery. An utter lack of guilt or shame on your part may even be taken as a form of principle, which has numerous benefits. Once you’ve got people believing that being an unrepentant shitheel is the same thing as being sane, sober and self-possessed, you can do anything. Any. Thing. This guide will teach you not only how to not regret your transgressions, but to sincerely believe that you did the world a favor.

Call it a “learning experience.”

There’s nearly unlimited mileage to be wrung from this one. If you’re a high school volleyball coach and you’ve just been caught screwing your entire back row in the team’s Ford Econoline van, saying something like, “Sure, it was wrong, but as a learning experience it made me the man I am today, and for that I have no regrets,” may convince others that you’re a victim of circumstance. If you can assert, straight-faced, that getting blown by high-schoolers in Spandex outfits has even one iota of educational benefit, you are well on your way to becoming a role model, and maybe even a state Senator.

Call it “youthful indiscretion.”

Politicians have been using this one for years, with positive results. Popular with former teenage degenerates, current teenage degenerates, and degenerates in general. Snorting cocaine off a transvestite hooker’s taint while jamming a crucifix up your ass, on video, would be difficult to explain to one’s prayer circle, unless you can blame it on youth. People will love you for this, because for some reason, a reformed loser has far more credibility than the unwaveringly straightlaced. Like the “learning experience,” this is a tact that could see you straight into the halls of Congress, especially if you have the balls to define “youth” as “up to and including one’s 50s.”

Blame alcohol

This of course excuses nothing, but explains everything, which is precisely the point. Alcoholism in no way relieves one of responsibility for his or her actions, but for some reason a complete lack of self-control has acquired a veneer of respectability in America, quite possibly for the fact that watching someone’s complete self-destruction is a now-entrenched form of entertainment that the public is extremely reluctant to relinquish. Who among us wouldn’t trade the bruised psyches of a few Senate pages for the highly amusing spectacle of a latent homosexual denouncing booze as the root of his troubles? It would be downright un-American.

Blame drugs

Popular with writers of rehab memoirs, this is somewhat riskier than blaming alcohol. While nearly everyone can identify with getting drunk and banging their sister-in-law and/or a stripper, few people can relate to sucking smelly, hairy dick for meth in a truck stop restroom. That’s where you come in. If you can manage to squeeze some empathy for your plight out of a handful of equally tetched strangers in a church basement NA meeting, you can squeeze it out of the general public, who are also desperate to believe anything that puts their minds at ease. You could even find that you have a gift for blaming drugs, which may land you a book deal or a chance to testify before a Senate subcomittee.

Blame someone else

Asserting that someone only tangentially related to your current predicament is the cause of all your troubles is extremely useful. People will be left scratching their heads, wondering what the hell you’re talking about, and that will be your opportunity to either dissemble further or flee. Sowing confusion is often the best method of securing your unaccountability, if only for the fact that even an overwhelming preponderance of evidence can be disregarded if a sufficient number of other names are dragged through the mud.

Blame Satan

He’s a wily one, that Satan. Good for Catholics caught with their fingers in Altar Boy pie, or really any faith that gives its members a readily available scapegoat for their troubles. One of religion’s greatest gifts is its ability to compel otherwise reasonable people to accept fantastic and absurdist notions about human motives so they can continue to deny their own role in creating the chaos in their lives. Also, with this one, it’s virtually guaranteed you’ll attract some sympathizers. Every halfwit and imbecile from sea to shining sea has a tale about Satan’s nefarious influence on their daily affairs. Milk them for all they are worth.

Blame society

Fell out of favor after Charles Manson, but it’s making a comeback. If you shoot up an office full of corporate drones and fat-assed secretaries with suction-cup Garfield toys and Dilbert cartoons, this should be your fallback, unless your boss escaped with his life, in which case you can blame him. Tends to not be as effective in schoolyard massacres unless you save your last bullet for yourself. A good rule of thumb is: If you leave behind no warm body for society to blame, then society might just blame itself. Or your parents, which brings us to...

Blame your parents/upbringing

Blaming one's parents is in vogue at the moment, and for good reason: There is absolutely nothing that cannot be justified by a well-laid plan of slander against those that gave you life. Caution is advised against using this one indiscriminately. If your parents are too old, helpless or cute, it could backfire horribly and expose you as the mendacious, opportunistic piece of shit you undoubtedly are, and that you'd regret. It's best to wait until your parents are dead before mounting any serious campaign of misinformation. If you're willing to take the chance, you could even try killing your parents and blaming the murder on the years of abuse you suffered at their hands, but beware: You'd better have a Kryptonite alibi, i.e., it'd better be true. If such an alibi is unavailable, be prepared to ascribe to your parents such horrific and despicable acts of child molestation that a full reckoning would make the Marquis de Sade's ears bleed. This is your only hope of convincing the jury that you're fit to remain free.

Blame your accuser

Wildly popular with rapists and minority groups with delusions of persecution, nothing says “no regrets” like a shameless and poleaxing hypocrisy. Blaming those who brought the charges is the oldest and most hackneyed form of abrogating one's responsibilities and also the most ineffective, as everybody expects it. For it to work, you have to throw in a twist. If accused of raping autistic Muppets, you must not only accuse the Muppets of spreading falsehoods, but of anally penetrating injured puppies with jagged rusty iron bars, of which you have photographic proof (even if you don't). Like blaming one's parents, though, blaming your accuser could backfire if your accuser is sufficiently pathetic or endearing. Damaging the credibility of a child should be no problem, as kids are malleable and gullible brats, but excoriating a sobbing child for being a lying little shit when he still cannot sit down after the cornholing you gave him will get you nowhere. Use discretion.