You Know What They Say…

November 13, 2021November 15, 2021 RilalyLeave a comment

What did they say? Should we be analyzing them based on what they just said? Those word choices lead me to believe they might be bizarre. What do we say about them? Did we read too much into it? Every time they learn a new word, they use it as often as they can. What does that say about him? “Who cares?” she says. She accuses us of over-analyzing them and being wrong more often than we’re right in these situations. “Maybe they just like using new words.”

You know what they say, “Where do we go from here now that all of the children are growing up?”

“I don’t think your mother would approve,” Green said.

“I don’t call her mother,” Aqua replied. “I call her mom. No one calls their mom mother anymore.”

“No one?”

“Babies call their mom mommy, kids call her mom, and kids who are trying to be handsome call her mother.”

You know what they say, “Who’s your daddy?”

When we finally locate our child’s missing underwear, we knew it was time to consult his doctor, on his meds, when our dad said:

“That’s such a relief, because I was so worried that our neighbors might find them at their house.”

“Why would his underwear be over there?” we said when his tones suggested we should all consider this a relief.

“Because they might find them there,” he said, as if we weren’t getting it. “They might steal them and say they found them at their house.”

“Why would they do that?” we asked.

“I watch that Court TV a lot, and these people dream up stories like these all the time,” he said. “Who’s to say they don’t dream up some tale about their daughter getting pregnant, and who’s the father? Why, it’s your kid! It’s what they call a paternity suit.”

“I’m going to guess that the judge might throw this one out dad,” we said, “because they’re four-year-olds.”

“Listen Mr. Smarty Pants,” he said in such a forceful manner that we took a step back. “You don’t know everything. You don’t know anything. They bring up frivolous cases like these all the time. You think they all get thrown out? And what happens before that case gets thrown out? Your child’s reputation gets dragged through the mud by all of these scandalous newspapers running stories on him.”

You know what they say, “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.”

“You’ll know you’ve been married a long time when you can identify the smell your partner’s gas in a crowd.”

You know what they say, “All right, all right, I hope you sons a bitches see the light.”

“Sometimes I think you enjoy making me suffer in life.”

You know what they say, “Who will buy these wonderful roses?”

“Why do you care if people are attractive?” Aqua asks. “Why does anyone care how attractive people are? On my list of priorities, how attractive a person is, is actually quite low.”

“I believe you, but attractive people make the world go round. We can be funny, even if we’re not, when we’re attractive. We can be smart, savvy, and strong if we’re more attractive. It’s not true. It’s a relative perception, and when I say it, I’m joking, but it does make the world go round.”

“Then don’t say it.”

You know what they say, “The world is, the world is love and life froggy.”

People mess up 180 degrees and 360 degrees all the time. “Your thoughts on this matter and mine are 360 degrees different.” We know what they mean. They mean 180 degrees, but what if we could change 360 degrees? It’s a dumb line that requires some pseudointellectual psychobabble, but it seems to me that there’s some surprisingly hilarious or existentially challenging lines in there somewhere that needs to be explored for idiotic impact.

You know what they say, “You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you.”

It is possible to lose your sanity in an instant, I know, but with as much space as authors devote to this phenomenon, loyal readers might think it’s common. Stephen King wrote about this phenomenon so often that I don’t think he realized how often he self-plagiarized. His scenes involved an incident so foreign to his character’s experience, and they proved so shocking and so scary that their hair went completely white in an instant. He wrote about such incidents so often that I think he would say it’s not only possible, it’s happened. “How is it possible?” is the only question that springs to mind. I’ll admit I don’t understand the finer details of hair growth, but I don’t understand how anything, no matter how scary or shocking, can cause the nutrient depletion necessary for grey and white hair from root to tip. The idea of losing sanity in an instant is more plausible but almost as difficult to comprehend. Most crazy people didn’t have a flashpoint. Crazy, more often than not, has an anthropological source that starts with genetics and builds over time after being raised with unusual people of unusual ideas.

“You mean to tell me that it’s possible that we could see something so shocking that it could completely alter my brain chemistry. The prospect of that is so scary that it might alter my brain chemistry.”

You know what they say, “If I wanted you dead McGurty, you’d be dead already!”

I don’t know if I’ve aged out of certain narratives, or if I’ve seen the same ones so often that I just don’t believe them anymore. Modern movies tipped my suspension of disbelief for I now finally see them trying to convince me that our action hero is a no-nonsense, gun-toting belligerent who takes no guff. They’ve ruined most of favorite movies of all time in the process, for I now see what I fell for for so many years. When I hear character-building lines that instruct the audience to recognize that our action hero is a no-nonsense, gun-toting belligerent who takes no guff, I remember all the action heroes I loved who were no-nonsense, gun-toting belligerents who took no guff. I immediately think such lines are lazy, and I eventually realize I’m not wrong, because I see the derivative nature of the line. Thanks to modern movies and all of the characterizations I no longer believe, I now see the old ones for what they are. I now see how the narratives of the movies I loved were carefully constructed by side characters the screenwriter used to build the main character, so the director didn’t have to use costly action scenes to prove to us what a badass he was. I’ve also learned a great deal from the show-don’t-tell school of writing that says if you’re going to have a badass, have them shoot an otherwise insignifigant side character. Shoot the one eating a sandwich over by that lamp. Shoot don’t tell. Shoot him for no reason other than you just didn’t like the way he looked at you. I’m not buying the “If I wanted you dead McGurty, you’d be dead already!” line anymore. It’s been used too many times since The Godfather and the James Bond movies for me to believe it now. If this character would murder another person without knowing all the details, they’re obviously not much of an intellectual, so her adversary should just try to trick her with some intellectual gamesmanship. Also, if she shoots first and asks questions later, shouldn’t she be locked up as a psychopathic maniac? “Shhh, watch the movie!”

Enjoying Other People’s Pain

October 16, 2021December 10, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

Tedious. The guy is tedious. He doesn’t even know it. He thinks he’s hilarious. He thinks this is his big moment. He probably thinks this moment on stage is the big break he’s been waiting for his whole life. Shouldn’t we always think that? Yes, but he thinks this is a stepping stone to a bigger, better life. Someone probably told him he was funny. Was it his Aunt Clara, or his dad? Who told this guy he was so funny that he should step on a stage and try to make a career out of it? I’m not funny, so I’m probably not the best critic, but I know what I think is funny and this ain’t it. I know the plight of the unfunny, but this guy? The idea that this guy has a bright, gleaming smile on his face makes it obvious that he thinks this is his moment in the Sun. He thinks he’s doing it. He thinks this might be the best day of his life. “Except for the birth of my children,” he might add, “and the day I bought Herschel the Turtle at a pet store, and the day I met my wife.” He’d probably qualify that best-day-of-my-life assessment, so no one calls him out on it, but he’d probably say it was top-5 … if someone stopped him right there in the first quarter of his standup routine.

How many people can do this? I wonder, while trying to drum up some respect for this guy. What percentage of the population can stand up on a stage and try to make complete strangers laugh? I respect anyone who can do what I never could. He told us he traveled twelve hours to be here tonight. He traveled half-a-day to try to make a roomful of strangers laugh. That’s a level of commitment that most people don’t have. It’s one thing to try to make a table of four laugh, but a comedy club requires its patrons to pay a two-drink minimum to enter. How many people could stand up to try to make a roomful of demanding, paying customers laugh? I mentally applaud this guy for doing what he’s doing, but I can’t get past the fact that he’s just not funny.

The audience is receptive at first. At first, they’re laughing at everything he says. Why are they laughing? My bet is they’re aching for comedy. It’s why they’re here. Most of them probably bought their tickets weeks in advance, and they looked forward to it all week. They convinced their girlfriend, wife, brother, or friend that this would be an excellent idea for a Friday night. They bought the tickets for the headliner, but they’re more than willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, if he’s halfway decent. What if he did something edgy? What if his act involved nothing more than eating a bowl of Count Chokula? What if he performed a dramatic reading of Dr. Seuss’ ABC book or The Great Gatsby? Would they still be laughing? To us, he has a certain position of authority on humor, because he’s up there, and we’re not. We assume he’s played a number of cities before ours. We assume that he’s up there, because other people more knowledgeable than us put him up there, and he’s been thoroughly vetted. He’s doing something none of us could do sober, so we defer to his experience. Is that why they’re laughing, because I find this guy typical and tedious.

I was so immersed in these thoughts that I missed the audience turn. The laughter went from a throng to sparse. What are you laughing at? I thought to those few still laughing, this guy’s not funny. While I searched for the laughers, I failed to notice that they were some of the few who were still laughing, until they stopped too.

The standup comedian was baking under an uncomfortably bright spotlight when that silence took hold. The silence was deafening and a little claustrophobic. Prior to the turn, he informed us that he traveled half a day for the chance to make us laugh, and he added some typical, tedious notes to that, and everyone laughed. That was his attempt to build familiarity with the audience, and to infect them with the laughing bug so they might follow him into the unfamiliar. They didn’t.

In the now deafening silence, I thought about that twelve-hour drive, and how it must’ve been filled with such excitement. I figured he must have quickly clicked his cruise control in, because he knew his excitement would cause him to violate speed limits. He probably thought his appearance in our small city would kickstart his dream of being a standup comedian. I wonder if that trip involved any concerns about about how quickly the best day in your life can turn into your worst. Twelve hours is a long time to spend in a car, alone, with nothing but your thoughts, your excitement and your worst fears.

He resembles Weird Al without the looks. I see myself in this man. I see his observations. I know where they’re headed, but they don’t quite get there. There’s something wrong with his delivery, and his material. Members of the audience are now cringing at one another. They’re as uncomfortable as he is, I think. I chuckle. He drops another tedious joke, and I laugh harder. His material hasn’t changed, but his delivery has. He’s in pain now, and I’m close to guffawing.

He had a few self-deprecating jokes that hit home in the beginning. He opened with a few jokes about being unattractive and overweight. He joked about how grateful he was that a woman decided to become the wife of an overweight, unattractive man. They laughed. Little by little, joke by joke, silence began to rear its ugly head, until it became obvious the poor man was baking under the spotlight. I was one of the few not laughing in the beginning. Now I’m the only one who is. Various members of the audience began twisting around in their seats to see who is laughing.

I laughed because I saw him sweating. I laughed because I saw him trying so hard that he was trying too hard. I laughed because he was drowning, and he was not doing some kind of meta routine on failure. I laughed, because I realized I knew we were watching a man’s dreams come crashing down around him. I laughed because I knew I was witnessing one of the best days of his life turn into his worst nightmare. It was fascinating to watch. It was captivating.

“What’s the opposite of empathy and sympathy?” I asked a friend, in a discussion involving this peculiar morbid curiosity we have for enjoying other people’s pain. When he didn’t answer straight away, I added, “Sociopathic, psychopathic? Is it narcissism? Whatever it is, I have it.”

“It’s evil!” he said. “We’re not evil, but we have a little spot of evil in our hearts. You know how some people say they have a soft spot in their hearts for something about a person, place, or thing? Yeah, we have a hard spot in our hearts.”

That was such an insightful comment that I couldn’t help but think he put a lot of thought into it, but was it true? Kind-hearted, sympathetic and empathetic men do not enjoy watching another man squirm in pain. I don’t rubberneck on the interstate, hoping to see some guy screaming on a stretcher, and I don’t enjoy seeing other people cry, but I love watching the worst part of an otherwise healthy, normal man’s worst day. What’s wrong with me? Have I been conditioned by the comedians who almost appear to enjoy bombing? Andy Kaufman, David Letterman, and Norm MacDonald turned bombing into an art form. They almost appeared to get off on it. MacDonald said he didn’t care if an audience laughed or not, as long as it was a good joke. That was his charm. Chris Elliott personalized the Kaufman/Letterman element and created a career out of it, based on the idea that no one would purposely subject themselves to the level of self-deprecation and debasement he did that would result in ridicule and embarrassment. Did they plant seeds in my brain that anything embarrassing, uncomfortable, or cringeworthy is some form of lowbrow entertainment that is so low that it’s considered high art? I didn’t get that, until I did. Once it clicked that it’s schtick, it stuck. Once I got it, I couldn’t wait to proclaim to the world that I got it. I understood it, until I understood it to the point that I now consider it hilarious to watch another man squirm under the bright spotlight of a small city’s comedy club.

It’s not schtick for this man however. He worked hard on this material. We can feel it in his transitions that this isn’t some form of meta material with highbrow commentary on the plight of man. We can hear him nix some material, lose his place, and worry that he frontloaded all of his best material. We can hear him worry about his performance while he’s talking. He’s lost faith in his material, in himself, and his ability to turn this around. I laugh harder. I have the giggles. I can’t stop. People are staring. The other comedians in the comedy club are giving me looks. I compose myself, until I analyze the comedian’s face deeper. His pain is so obvious that I imagine this is what it might look like if I could see the expression of someone who just jumped off a building. I have the giggles again, but I’m controlling it better this time.

Mercifully, the comedian’s act ends. The crowd applauds politely, and the comedian surprises me by mouthing, “Thank you!” to me. I didn’t know it at the time, but my friends later tell me that he began directing his jokes at me toward the tail end of his act. I saw him looking at me, but I didn’t think he was looking at me. They said he was. He, presumably, thought I was the only audience member who got it. I felt bad, because I wasn’t laughing with him. I was laughing at him.

One excuse I could use to explain my behavior is that I find the unfunny hilarious. Perhaps I relate to this comedian, because I’ve been told that I have a decent pitch, and I know my beats, but my punchlines are so confusing that they’re not funny. Perhaps my laughter had something to do with the idea that I don’t enjoy traditional humor. I’ve watched too many comedies, sitcoms, and radio shows to appreciate what we call a traditional humor.

It’s Letterman’s fault. He started it all for me. Letterman turned squirming into an art form. Letterman left us wondering how we could help him, and he answered by saying there’s no help for me. It made us so uncomfortable it was almost painful and hilarious to watch. It’s the joy of witnessing other people’s pain (OPP), and it’s David Letterman’s fault. I’d love to say that I believe that. I’d love to say that watching him on NBC for all those years had such a profound effect on me that I’m now conditioned to find OPP hilarious. How many years did he cringe with us in uncomfortable pain? I’d love to say it’s all his fault, but my enjoyment of OPP predates him.

***

In grade school, I just happened to have the perfect angle to catch Andy Parizek’s impact face, when he walked into a light pole. Some deep, dark part of me found his expression of pain so precious that I watched it over and over on an internal loop I developed in my brain. I wished I had some ability to draw, so I could create some product to memorialize this moment. Andy Parizek wore glasses, and the impact was so perfect that it broke his glasses in a clean break right down the middle. The pain was followed by a brief period of silence in which the good people around him tried not to laugh and further his pain. When those good people then moved in to comfort him, I tried to run away to a dark corner of the playground to laugh, but I didn’t quite make it.

“How come when we get hurt, it’s so funny to you,” Mike Amick said, “but when you get hurt, we’re supposed to take it serious?”

Is it evil to enjoy watching other people get hurt? Do we have a hard spot on our hearts for certain moments? We’re not evil, but is there something wrong with us if we enjoy it when another person cries during an argument? Is there a hard spot on the heart of someone who enjoys watching another’s dreams come crashing down around them? The fact that a grade school child’s assessment stays with me to this day should suggest that I’m still struggling with it.

When we discuss such things, some of us exaggerate the levels of pain involved. The incidents we’re talking about here are skinned knees, the guy who walked into a pole and broke his glasses in half, and a comedian who wasn’t able to make strangers laugh. Most of us have never seen anyone get truly hurt, and if we did, we probably wouldn’t laugh. Yet, it is a little deranged and morbid to enjoy watching another experience minor pain, regardless if that victim eventually finds a way to laugh about it.

I’m a grown man now who manages to display kindness in the face of tragedy. When someone dies, I join the good people who express compassion, and sympathy. If I ever saw someone truly get hurt, I don’t think I would find their excruciating pain enjoyable. I know all kinds of physical and emotional pain intimately now, and I empathize when anyone endures minor physical pain, but after I tend to their wounds and make sure their okay, I still rush to that dark corner of the room to laugh my tail off.

Conducting corporate meetings is not in the same league with standing on stage before paying customers, but they gave me a taste of what this comedian was going through. When you’re conducting a board meeting, your material sucks, but it’s important that the employees know the material. It doesn’t matter that the employees know that they’ll be caught with their pants down when the situation in which this material arises, they’re so bored they can’t take it anymore. I’ve been on both sides of corporate board meetings, and I know one in one hundred are in some way interesting. In the hundreds of board meetings I conducted, I thought I had an interesting one once. It was a special subject I knew inside and out, I got a great night sleep the night before, and I think I ate something healthy. I was on, and I knew it. I dropped two or three jokes that I thought were pertinent, and I looked out in the audience to gauge their reaction. Two people were asleep, and the rest of the eyes in the room were glossed over. I had a small taste for what this comedian was going through, but that didn’t make it any less funny to watch him squirm and implode.

Anyone who laughs at other people’s pain knows they’re going to get theirs, eventually. We’ve all experienced some levels of karma, but we know that ain’t it. There’s more to come. We know it’s going to get us, and it’s going to hurt. We know there will come a day when we’re old and decrepit, struggling to breathe one last breath, and someone will find that struggle hilarious. We’ll probably yell something like, “What are you laughing at? I’m dying here!” in the heat of the moment. When our emotional hysteria subsides, and we don’t have the strength to fight death anymore, we’ll either acknowledge that we deserve it after laughing at so many others during the worst days of their life, or we’ll find humor in it too.

Demystify This!

October 14, 2021December 31, 2024 Rilaly1 Comment

Everything you believe in is some trumped up idea developed to foster your illusions. Don’t believe me, I’ll prove it. Give me something you believe in. Anything. Big or small. What defines you? What drives your passion? What makes you tick? Great, now back up and give me some room, because the shrapnel flies when I start in on dispassionate observations.

Led Zeppelin was one of the greatest band of all time right? Yeah, they’re frauds, and I was onto them at a very young age. I knew there was no way one guy could come up with all that brilliant music. I know, the other guys came up with some of the music, but most of the credits for writing the compositions go to Jimmy Page. I knew, even at a very young age, that there was no way one man could come up with that much brilliance. I was a dumb kid at the time, so I thought he sold his soul to the devil. I was eventually vindicated when we all found out how much material he stole. They say he only stole some songs and some riffs. I read a report that suggested that of the first four albums, he/they stole ten songs by some measure, debatably, arguably, and whatever qualifiers we need to use to avoid incriminating lawsuits. I say we don’t know the full extent of his/their theft. I say they’re damned thieves who probably stole more than we’ll ever know. Look it up, there are lawsuits all over the place for infringements, unauthorized borrowing, and outright theft. I was so excited when I read that. It was vindication. All you silly idiots who believed that they were geniuses were wrong. Look at you! Are your crying? I enjoy the taste of tears. I don’t know if disappointment makes them extra salty, or if I just enjoy the taste of victory. Do you mind if I lick them off your face?

Who’s your favorite actor? You know what, don’t answer that. We tell our people our favorite actor with pride. We talk about the best movie from their catalog, and we say that it was their movie. Have you ever seen the list of credits listed in your average movie? There are at least hundreds of names? How many people were responsible for that movie? What percentage of that movie’s success was due to the actor you love? They’re vehicles for the lines, the action, and the drama, but how much time do they sit in vehicles before they’re called upon to do a scene? They don’t call it the-hurry-up-and-wait industry for nothing.

The production crew hates calling the lead actor to the set, so they spend most of their day readying the scene for them. They hire stand-ins to get the shot right, and they work with the screenwriter to make sure the lines won’t cause the actor to have a hissy fit. The actor steps from their trailer, says the lines a couple times, and they all move on. Most actors hate walking onto an ill-prepared set. They don’t want to stand around to make sure the lighting is right, and the scene is perfect, so the production crew stresses each other out to make sure everything is perfect for the entrance of the actor. The actor finally enters and delivers the line, as if it’s on the fly. It’s not my intention to suggest that convincing a group of people that you’re another person is easy, or that I could do it. I’m talking about the audiences reaction to it. I’m talking about how we immerse ourselves in movies to such a degree that we believe they said the line they read. We do that. We all do it. We say, “You know it’s like Jack Nicholson says …” He said it, sure, but he read it. He memorized the line, but he didn’t think it up. A screenwriter thought up that line. Now, Nicholson probably said it with more flair and charisma than the screenwriter could’ve, but how many takes does the production crew have to sit through before he got the line just right? They’re frauds perpetuating a myth that we love.

My favorite recording artist was “hardly there” in the production of my favorite album. “What?” It was largely a creation in the minds of a producer, the guitarist, an expert mixer, and a number of other credited players who helped my favorite artist produce the product I’ve loved for decades. I learned an important lesson the day I read that: Ignorance is bliss. If we want to continue to love an artist, particularly an actor or a musician, we shouldn’t read websites or watch documentaries that dive deep into our favorite artistic creations from them.

How about Stephen King? Do you read him? Yeah, he stole the idea for one of his most popular books Misery from an Erik Keene’s dead aunt? Our initial inclination is that Erik Keene was a delusional whack job looking for a way to harass King and his family, and while that might be true with Keene, how many struggling writers submit rejected ideas to publishers only to have the core idea of that rejected manuscript show up in that publisher’s favorite author’s library? How many authors simply run out of ideas? How many writer’s blocks have ended with a stolen manuscript? How many big time authors were so frustrated by their writer’s block that they threatened to retire? How many desperate publishers, bent on keeping a big name, help them come up with ideas? Where did they get those ideas? Have they ever sorted through the slush pile of rejected compositions and come up with an idea for your favorite author. I’m saying this happens all the time, I’m not, but has it ever happened? Does it happen more often than we know?

How about Walter Payton? If you love football, you know he’s declared one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. Have you ever seen the guys from the 70’s and 80’s trying to chase him down and tackle him? They’re so little. With the size, strength, and speed of the NFL today, Walter Payton would probably be a third-down, situational back, nothing more. You might think that’s idiotic, but this is what we do when we attempt to tear down everything you believe in. We take your favorite bands, your favorite authors, and your favorite athletes, and we tear them apart. Nugget by nugget, brick by brick. This is our way of saying we don’t believe in you anymore, and we’ve broken free of any shackles we once had by believing in you. We have nothing to rebel against anymore, all of our parents are dead, so rebelling against you and everything you believe in gives us gas to dispel that feeling of individuality we never strove for in our teens in the manner most kids did.

There’s poetry in baseball, and baseball is poetry, punctuated by plays like “The Catch”. Willie Mays made “The Catch”. It was poetic right? Wrong. I’ve watched that catch so many times over the years, trying to figure out the big deal. I know it happened in the World Series and all that, but people say it was one of the greatest catches of all time. Have you seen that catch? I thought it was barehanded for whatever reason. It wasn’t. It was just a catch, and a catch we probably see a couple of times a year in major league baseball. Hell, I think I did it once in softball. It wasn’t a special catch by any means.

You might not care about Willie Mays, but do you care about the Nebraska Cornhuskers? Yeah, they’re frauds too. You probably still celebrate the years they won three national championships in four years, but I say the only reason they won them is that they had such an easy schedule. Admit it, they were frauds. Everything you believe in is fraudulent.

Demystify the past? What are you talking about demystify the past? I’m talking truth here brotha. I have no skin in this game. I want to know the truth? Why don’t you? You and the collective ‘we’ have trumped up these otherwise marginal people and accomplishments, and it sends a tingle up my leg when I’m able to pop a hole in your delusions. You’re all so ridiculous. You believe in things, and it makes you happy. Your passions breed a sense of fulfillment, even when what you know they’re false. That’s why I feel the need to correct the record. I don’t allow myself to believe in false things. Why do you? You can try to turn this back on me, but what are you going to squash? I don’t believe in anything. I have no passions, so good luck. It makes me feel smarter to know more than you and all of your silly idiot friends who believe in things and develop passions.

The past wasn’t as great as you romantic types thought. It’s a narrative for the romantics. You’re not a romantic? Look at all the silly people you believe in. Why do we believe in people? Why do we trump up their rather routine accomplishments, because they’re about us. We’ve found a way to live vicariously through their accomplishments to idealize who we wish we could be. We treat diminishment of their accomplishments as a personal insult.

What’s the flip side of the coin? You think that by diminishing others’ accomplishments, I hope to relieve myself of any disappointments I have in my life? All right, I’ll admit that my life didn’t turn out the way I thought it would but who’s has? I have some accomplishments in life, but they pale in comparison to these false gods you worship. They’re silly people. You’re silly, and we’re all quite boring, so we assign poetic majesty to the little things and these little people did who supposedly did big things, so we have something to believe in.

I see what you’re doing though. You’re trying to find a super-secret part of me to analyze. You’re trying to find my motivation, so you can dismiss my findings. Go for it. Smarter people than you have tried. They were wrong, and you’ll be wrong. This is not about me. It’s about you. I’m a blank slate, an empty vessel, like the actors you adore. Have you ever heard the theory that the more devoid of a core personality an actor is, the better they are at filling that void with a fictional personality? That’s me. I have no motivation, except to prove you, and your fellow romantics, wrong. I find that so satisfying that it quenches a need. I don’t get passionate about silly things. Why do you? Why do you believe in anything? I seek to question that which you believe in, until it leads to an ultimate deconstruction, and I hope to help you ultimately reach a higher sphere of consciousness where nothing is real. It’s about you. It’s not about me. I have no skin in this game. I’m a dispassionate observer who believes that you romantics who seek poetry and majesty in the past are just plain silly. In the battle between mind and heart, most of us know that our passions will not withstand scrutiny. I dismantle these beliefs, because I think intelligence dispels belief.