September 23, 2004
The Hijacking of a Short Paper
But aside from a bit of shameless self-glorification, what was John Smith’s chief motive for writing and publishing his accounts? Both the introduction to the piece and the final section of the excerpt indicate that My Brain is Bleeding. If you think that’s gross, I’m sorry, but . . . I’ve often wondered about people who couldn’t quite catch onto the whole “blood and gore” thing . . . I mean, what do they think they’re full of themselves, really? It’s about as logical as hoping for a golden whistle. In the end, some flamingo is just going to come along and take everything you have away from you and sell it to white slavers just to make a buck so it can buy itself a fake leather chair. None of that is really worth the effort. Why, for instance, do you bother to empty the trash? What are you throwing away? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, right? You could be swapping that crap for Porsches and gold bars, dude . . . If I had a big gold bar, I’d set it in a prominent place in my living room, and everyone who came by would stop and stare at it, and ask me if it was fake. And I would tell them that yes, it was. And they would believe me because people are just that credulous. I mean, what would I really be doing with a gold bar sitting in my living room anyway? I’d be much better off with an orange recliner right? One of those really big comfortable ones that you can kick back in and be asleep before you even have the footrest all the way out. The problem with those is, you can’t read in them, or even watch movies, really. And I do like to do both of those. I get little enough real reading done as it is, I don’t need some random piece of furniture putting me to sleep as well. Not that I don’t get enough sleep . . . I get far more than I need to stay alive, and nearly enough to be fairly comfortable, all things considered. I don’t stay awake on caffeine more often than is absolutely necessary, and at this time of year it rarely is necessary. When I do go with caffeine, my drink of choice (if I can get it) is Cherry Coke because of all the sugar. Of course, Dr. Pepper or any number of things will do in a pinch. That’s a pinch of sugar or a pinch of cheek . . . whichever you prefer. When I say “cheek” of course, I don’t mean mouthing off, I mean that part of your face that old ladies grab and shake when they come up to you at funerals and other such places. I don’t think I recall ever attending any funerals, actually, so I wouldn’t know about that I suppose. I’ve been in the same building as a funeral a number of times. I remember when I was younger my grandparents would be taking care of me, but they’d have a funeral to go to, so I’d tag along and hang out in the upper floors of their creepy old church while the funeral took place somewhere under me. I suppose I should have found the whole situation vaguely creepy, but the real concern was to be quiet and not disturb the old people. If I disturbed them they’d probably have swarmed up and tried to pinch my cheek or something, and I didn’t want that. I don’t know what I wanted. I never wanted anything like a pony or a fast car or a toy jabberwocky or a box of tequila or a painting of a sunny day . . . which is good, I guess, because I never got any of those things. And if I had, I would probably just have traded them for gold bars or something equally worthless which would just sit and collect dust for eons and never do anyone any good unless someone needed a handy murder weapon in a pinch. But I’m not going there again.
Posted by Jared at September 23, 2004 01:09 AM | TrackBack