by The Fictional Cafe Editorial Staff
It was an exciting – may we say shocking? – weekend when every minion of the current US Administration resigned in protest, followed by the entire Congress and Senate! (Note: what the current news-for-sale media won’t publish is they also resigned at gunpoint.) Oh My Gosh! It seems everybody who is – was? – somebody wanted a Control-Alt-Delete change in guvva-mint, and Fictional Cafe is delighted to announce that PS Conway, our current Fearless Leader and ruling Poetry Writer in Residence, has, as of today, April Fool’s Day, been selected (note: removing the s is your prerogative)! Of course, Fictional Cafe Baristas were quickly appointed to all the significant positions of governmensch but now it looks like the whole nation is celebrating!
In live interviews on the Washington Memorial Monument Plaza, the American people spoke: they prefer comedy over policy. Our new Fearless Leader, Prez PS, believes in “it’s your own thing, do what you wanna do,” to have satire presiding over the Supreme Court’s outdated stoicism, and a government which embraces and encourages choruses of Bacchus’s famous remark, “Let’s have fun, fun, fun ’til Daddy takes the T-Bird away.”
The really great thing about Prez PS is this: he has already codified his extensive, deeply considered and eloquently codified his – and our – belief system, “America’s Rules for the Greatest”, or ARG (note it is one letter shorter than MAGA, saving us all time, money, and a caps lock). All the many nuances of ARG can be found here!
Yes, folks, on this April Fool’s Day in the year 2025, we announce the publication of Life Sucks, the brand-new, April Fool’s Day book written by our Fearless Leader, Prez PS Conway! From its exuberant cover, an original design created by the artist Yucen Yao, to the myriad pages of PS’s brilliant Soliloquy, Life Sucks is the first and last word (as long as you include the subtitle, “Epilogue” and “Wait! There’s More:) on the Mark left on the Biblical Cain.
Without further adieu, an excerpt from Life Sucks: Memories and Introspections During the Great Covid Lockdown, which will assuredly leave you wanting to have, hold, cherish, highlight, underline, quote to others and re-read again and again your own copy of this truly unique and bizarre work (available from Amazon or your local bookstore while supplies last).
Life Sucks: The Introduction
Hello, friends. It’s been a while. Did you miss me? That is, of course, me taking into consideration that many of you are new to my erudite genius. You lucky bastards. You’re in for a treat. What you do need to know upfront, dear reader, is that I started an epic comedy website entitled “Life Sucks Laugh Here” in January 2020, near the beginning of COVID lockdown.
I posted shticks most weeks throughout the remainder of the year. That is, until a new employer told me my writing was too “controversial” and “crass” for the “image” of their bullshit failing start-up company.
After the 2020 U.S. presidential election, I took down the site. Turns out, my family liked food, clothing, and a college education for the kids too much. Despite the time, energy and psychic despair I put into those words, I did not make a nickel on any of it. Cuz I’m a giver.
During those 40+ weeks, thousands of dedicated readers would tune into my delicious Sunday essays like Jim Jones’ disciples showing up for grape Kool-Aid. The COVID lockdown had us trapped inside craving any distraction possible. Like Rolaids, my rants spelled R.E.L.I.E.F. for many.
Under the first regime of Donald Trump, herein “Cheeto Christ,” over 1,100,000 Americans lost their lives to COVID. We were forced to shelter-in-place and consume a relentless litany of conspiracy theories, fake truths, and other such navacancha. All generously fed into our gaping beaks, baby-bird style, by the government, cable news, and the interwebs.
My vision for the website was simple: distraction. Laughter was a given. The general idea was to create a type of “Literary Comedic Nihilism.” You’d learn a little, laugh a lot, and then forget about it all . . . because it never really mattered anyway. I created a character, PS Conway. A pseudo-me. An amalgamation of Me, a Not-Me, and an alpha asshole who was christened Pygmalion Shitake a.k.a. Pig Shit a.k.a. PS (Conway).
This is where the nihilism comes into play. Some readers took what they read at face value. This created a perception that this character was me speaking my opinions. The real PS. Not the character PS. Geez. When I put it that way, how could there have ever been any confusion?
Ugly consequences followed. Some real-world friends became collateral damage. I had switched tribes on them, or so they thought. And we still have not spoken to this day. That’s why I am so comforted by the immortal words of the greatest band of all time, Toad the Wet Sprocket, in their song “Little Buddha,” “Life is suffering. Tee-hee, Ha-ha.”
Since the 2020 essay series, Life Sucks Laugh Here, the words have continued to flow. I have redirected my genres. Humor has since transformed into poetry. And I have been successfully publishing my lyrical words for a smaller, more focused community of readers.
Honestly, I probably would have stayed in my artsy lane, were it not for a consequential 2024 U.S. presidential election, a re-read of my 2020 essays, and a profound sense of déjà vu. Time (and human stupidity) have such a wonderfully ironic sense of repeating the same failing behaviors expecting a different result. Or, at least, so said Einstein.
My invisible friends, let us now enter this wee time capsule. Perhaps you’ll laugh. Perhaps you’ll intuit a cautionary tale. Perhaps you’ll be irretrievably scarred and offended by all the dark humor.
Here are a few tips to prepare you for this exploration of learning, laughter, and life:
1. Read this book of assembled essays like chapters in a normal book. There are a lot of callbacks as you progress that won’t make a lot of sense if you do not.
2. Read more literature and philosophy. Seriously. Learn to think more critically and form your own opinions. Those timid herds of Sames will always be there, lowing in the fields of conformity, awaiting your return if independent thought becomes too daunting.
3. Read my poetry book Echoes Lost in Stars. Available now globally in all Amazon markets. It’s like looking in the face of god and beholding beauty through her eyes.
4. If you have a delicate constitution, deeply held religious or political beliefs, a mind that cannot comprehend satirical writings, or are offended by well-placed profanity, then kindly piss off. Walk away now. My witty brilliance will never be for you. The goal is to truly make you smile, giggle, and laugh. Forget about all the bullshit in your life for a few minutes. My grandmother had an Irish phrase for life’s BS . . . navacancha. Instead of cussing, she was known for saying, “That’s a bunch of navacancha.” Turns out, it was a completely made-up word, and a delicious example of irony when a word for “complete BS” actually was complete BS. Ha!
5. Last Warning: remember, this is satire. Keep your ingrained biases in check. In the immortal words of Sergeant Hulka in Stripes, “Lighten up, Francis.” If you laugh hard enough, and perhaps pee just a little, then perhaps you will remember me fondly, tell your friends to read this book, and re-read it yourself a second or third time. If you remember me too fondly, then you have a serious pee fetish, and this material is likely a little too intense for you . . . sorry.
About the Author
PS Conway returned to poetry after a long hiatus from writing. Since the beginning of the Covid lockdown, his words have attracted an ardent community of readers, both online and in print. A two-time Pushcart Nominee, PS has now published over fifty poems across four online literary journals and sixteen poetry anthologies, two of which have been Amazon Best Sellers (so far). He also serves as the 2024-25 Poet-in-Residence for the online literary journal, The Fictional Café. “Echoes Lost in Stars” is his first poetry book of exclusively his own work. PS finds fascination in language birthed from dark, literate, and emotive places. In his free time, he fancies himself a rockstar, jamming on his drum kit, and a wannabe sommelier, savoring succulent red wines with his wife Susan and their two amazing adult daughters.
A Q&A with PS Con-way
Fictional Cafe: When did you write your first poem?
PS: I’m not sure I ever wrote poetry in any meaningful way until 2020 – the COVID lockdown. That’s when I really started writing – and rewriting. I’d taken a took a long hiatus from writing. I always made this analogy about how there was this locked closet in my brain of pent-up creative energy. And it wasn’t a standard closet. It was kind of a walk-in closet. Once the door had opened, I haven’t even found the back of the thing with all these 30 years of unused creativity. It’s just exploding out right now. I think I’m up to, I don’t know . . . I’m looking at my files . . . probably 500 poems in the last three years. And they just keep coming. Tidal waves. Some are good and some are crap, obviously. But you know. It’s a walk-in closet of creativity, something I always bring myself back to. It’s not just a closet, right? It’s a deep closet. You can’t see the back of it. And there’s just all this stuff in there that needs to come out.
FC: You mentioned you try to write every morning, right?
PS: I do. I’ve always been an early riser, and I’m one of those annoying people who’s instantly alert and awake when I wake up. My wife hates it. She needs her half-hour of coffee to chill. I want to have a conversation, and she’s just like, “Dude, you’ve got to back off. This is too intense.” So I channel that intensity into my morning writing. That way my writing doesn’t interfere with my primary job—right?
FC: How do you think of yourself as a writer? A romantic? Free versifier? Modernist?
PS: I think at heart I really am a nihilist. I don’t really believe in a lot of things, but I have feelings about a lot of things, and this is just one of those. Right.
FC: Whom do you most admire for their writing, regardless of genre?
PS: As an English major in college, I’d always kind of fancied myself as the next William Faulkner or Toni Morrison. Today my most favored poets are Keats, Yeats, Poe, T.S. Eliot. I think every writer at some point has that vision for themselves.
FC: You’re Irish, a land of famed writers of both poetry and prose. Have you been?
PS: Yeah, most recently for our seventh trip over. Our first trip was for my wife’s and my honeymoon. When I think of Ireland I get choked up a little bit. Its people are playful, they love to bust chops, they love to tease.
FC: Is there not a note of the Irish dark wit and irony in Life Sucks?
PS: Yeah, I think I have an Irish muse. I don’t know what her name is. I call her Maeve for now. But like, she’s in there somewhere and when she comes, it’s a very distinctive energy when I write. I don’t want to sound weird or too metaphysical about it, but it just is. It’s an energy.
FC: It’s certainly in both your poetry and your creative nonfiction. Thanks so much for visiting with us today.
PS: Thank you. It’s been an honor to be Fictional Cafe’s Writer in Residence.
FC: We hope you find many readers for this truly extraordinary work. A final glimpse:
What happens when a poet with a darkly literate soul turns his attention to the absurdity of a global pandemic? You get PS Conway’s unique brand of “literary comedic nihilism.” Written during 40 weeks of lockdown, this unapologetically irreverent collection of essays is more relevant now than ever. Originally shared on his (now-defunct) blog, “Life Sucks. Laugh Here,” Conway’s essays, collected in book form as Life Sucks, serve as both a nostalgic reflection on a “troubling period in history” and a cautionary tale about society’s cyclical absurdity.
This fleuron, representing the classic comedy/tragedy masks, was commisioned and designed by Yucen Yao for PS Conway’s book, Life Sucks. Copyright (c) 2025 Yucen Yao.