Category: Writing

Stuck in the Middle with You

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“I’m smart. Not like everyone says. I’m smart, and I want respect.” –Fredo from The Godfather. I love this quote, as anyone who has ever read this site knows. I use it so often that I use it so often, too often, because it just seems to be an evergreen quote that fits so many of my themes. It’s an everyman quote. It’s one of those quotes that if we don’t say it every day, we probably think it. We know we’re not able to figure some things out, but we’re able to figure out a mess of other things, so that should make us smart right?  

What is smart, intelligent, or knowledgeable? It’s a question loaded with so many variables that it’s the literal definition of a loaded question. There are so many forms of human intelligence that it takes a lot of intelligence to understand the definition of intelligence. We all have some figurative schemes of thought that we use to develop images for matters of discussion. If I were to ask you what the elite intellectual looks like, you automatically picture the white lab coat. Researchers conducting tests on individuals know that if they want their subjects to take them seriously, they need to have a closet full of white coats. Ear, nose and throat, family practitioners probably also have a closet full of white coats they wear to presumably put an end to us complaining that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Depending on their goal of leading us to assume they’re smart, they might also want to mess their hair up (a la Albert Einstein), exhibit poor social skills, and thet should probably look like he doesn’t spend enough time outside. Our local car mechanic doesn’t fit any of these bullet points, however, but if you’ve ever sat down with one of them, you know the best and brightest among them have such a wide array of intelligence of their profession that it can be humbling and disorienting to hear them go on. That’s pretty relative you might argue, because we all have our areas. That’s kind of the point though isn’t it? If a man in a lab coat has a spark plug go out in his engine, he’s as lost as the rest of us, and the epitome of relative definition of intelligence. We all have our areas that make us feel smarter than most, but we eventually run across something, someone, or some other person place, place, or thing that makes us feel pretty darn dumb.   

Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met also had another key ingredient that is in short supply: clarity. They not only have a clearer vision of life than the rest of us, they have wisdom based on experience. They’re not afraid, intimidated, or confused by questions, arguments, or refutation. They’re able to roll with the punches, because they’ve already argued with so many people that they know every possible argument for and against. Yet, before we consider those with greater clarity intelligent, we have to consider another variable of intelligence: sensitivity. Most clear-minded people I know suffer from some deficits in emotional intelligence. They know the truth as they’ve experienced it and seen it, but they don’t account for all of the variables that could undermine their version of the truth. Can something be true, if it is only true 99.9 percent of the time? If an emotionally intelligent percent invites anecdotal evidence that undermines that truth, is it still true? There are times when it seems clarity and sensitivity seem to be combatants in the pursuit of truth, intelligence, and knowledge. Most clear thinkers are so lacking in sensitivity that they almost seem robotic, and they view arguments against their views as an attempt to cloud the truth and add confusion, but they don’t alter their views one iota.  

The more succinct definition of intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. That definition might lead us to seek all of the varying definitions of knowledge, and how we apply it. It doesn’t serve a purpose, but some of us have retained more knowledge about the NFL, from the 80s and 90s, than most of the experts on pregame, NFL shows. Try to stump us. Go! Some of us know more about the show Seinfeld than anyone we’ve ever met. Say what you want about such knowledge, but it is information that we’ve retained, and in some cases used, or applied, as we’ve dropped the show’s jokes in a timely manner that has impressed people. Is it smart though? Will our audiences consider that intelligent? Our friends probably consider retention of such information the definition of intelligence, but how many strangers, who didn’t grow up in the same era we did, will put that information/knowledge on the same level with the man who is intimately familiar with Shakespeare or Chaucer? If you’re anything like me, and you enjoy searching for seemingly impossible answers to questions, you’ll probably end up saying, “I honestly don’t know if I’m smart or dumb. I’m probably Stuck in the Middle with You.” 

“Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am stuck in the middle with you
When you started off with nothing
And you’re proud that you’re a self-made man.” –Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan

I’ve met a wide array of writers throughout my life. Some of them exposed for me the difference between the creative term brilliance and the more math and science definition of intelligence. I’ve met brilliantly creative writers who were so good that I was just plain jealous, which led me to try to outdo them with a long stretch of writing. I’ve also met a number of writers who knew the craft so well that they gave me some excellent pointers and valuable information that I still have in my head whenever I write. They knew the ABCs of writing so well that it was a little surprising to learn they were actually average-to-poor writers. When I see them now, I call them editors. Editors can spot all of the errors of the creatives, and their approach to writing can be so oriented in fact that it takes all the fun out of writing. Most of them don’t do it to be mean, better, or correct, it’s just the way their mind works. They’ve learned the craft by studying the masters, and if we run into a wall, they can provide helpful advice based on their studies. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but most of them don’t know their limitations. It seems to me that they know masters’ masterpieces, so well that they wouldn’t dare approach the craft in an innovative manner that might violate the tenants laid down by those they deify. They know the masterpieces far better than jokers to the right, and they’re paralyzed by idea that if they can’t top them, why try? Those of us who aren’t as familiar with the literary canon might be dumb enough to think we have something to add to the conversation. Even if we don’t come anywhere close to what editors determine to be quality material, we don’t lie awake at night in fear of a clown from the right dropping the dreaded ‘D’ word, derivative, on us.       

Those of us stuck in the middle with you grew up on KISS, and heavy metal, and we loved the silly, simplistic movies and shows from the 80s and 90s that knew how to get to the point. If we were to ask members of that generation (my generation) I suspect that most of them would say, “It was a pointless era, but who cares, it was built on being fun, funny, and entertaining.” Whatever point these entertainers had, they got to it quick, because they feared belaboring a point might lose them their short-attention span, key demo. Those stuck in the middle with you have those influences loaded in our neurons, firing our synapses. Is that a brag? Some of the songs, shows, and movies from that era were quite innovative, creative, and influential, but no one would confuse memorizing the lines of dialogue from Buggs Buggy and Gilligan, or studying the lyrics of KISS, with an intellectual exercise. Yet, when we combine all of that silly simplicity with an appreciation for the masters of literature, we end up somewhere in the middle.

Those of us in the middle “Started off with nothing”. The “Theys” of our lives helped us form a foundation by teaching us the elements of style, and the rules, but they couldn’t teach us how to deviate. Those deviations defined us in many ways, ways that led us to be a self-made man when it came to writing. We normally equate the term self-made man with success, but the self-made men who ended up anonymous failures are far more numerous. They just didn’t succeed. They were the dreamers who were so delusional they never paid heed to those who told them to give up, because they were making fools out of themselves. The term self-made man is a nebulous one that we could apply to high school graduates and “some college” applicants. We could apply it to artists, craftsmen, and small business owners who had to claw and scratch their way to some relative definition of success. The opposite of self-made man, arguably and debatably, is the college graduate. The college graduate is the product of at least four years of shaping and molding, until he establishes himself in the workplace or office. 

We could also say that the difference between the self-taught, or autodidactic, and the college graduate, or manualdidactic(!), is status. The mindset of the college graduate is that they’ve achieved status, and the self-made man is forever in pursuit of it. If we think about this dynamic in terms of the waiting room for a job interview, the college graduate believes he completed most of the interview on his resume, as he listed out the bullet points of what he did in college. He has achieved knowledgeable status, and he thinks the interview process will be paint-by-numbers after that. The high school graduate and “some college” applicant sits with inferiority complex believing that everyone else in the waiting room is a college graduate. His need to prove himself surely preceded his entrance into the building, as he apprenticed for the job doing grunt work in the field in question. Who will the head hunter in Human Resources view as more intelligent, knowledgeable, and the better candidate in the interview? It’s all relative to the head hunter, of course, but self-taught man knows that the onus will be on him to prove himself in the interview.

When we hear the self-made man talk about his pursuit of success, we often hear them make the dubious claim that, “Everyone was against me,” and/or “Nobody thought I would succeed,” but we could argue that such lines romanticize their struggle. More often than not, no one cared about them when they weren’t doing anything, because why would they? If they cared at one time, it probably took the self-made man so long to get there that everyone just sort of gave up on them. The self-made man probably had a lot of people cheering him on in the beginning, and that probably ignited something in him, but whereas they started giving up on him, he never stopped believing. The self-made man probably thought there was something to it, even when there wasn’t. Whatever stoked his desire to believe in himself took, and he continued to believe in himself regardless. Most of us don’t even remember the initial driver that spurred us onto further creations, but there is some inner drive to keep doing it. We’re the self-made, self-taught men who spend our time striving to prove that we’re not as dumb as our college transcripts suggest, and we are endlessly pursuing the sometimes-silly things we love with passionate zeal. 

In the craft of writing, over-the-top intellectuals are also handicapped by the Great-American-Novel syndrome. They can’t write anything that is anything less than the most important thing ever written. This is probably why they sit behind a blinking cursor for so many hours. They are profound thinkers who refuse to write anything common (“Don’t be common!”), trite, cliché, hackneyed, or banal. They prefer to dazzle with the unfathomably amazing, the intellectually illuminating, and that which is illustrative of the plight of mankind against the meaning of life. “Just write,” writing experts tell us. “I can’t,” they say. “I can’t think of anything.” They usually sit before those blinking cursors trying to come up with something so brilliant that it’s beyond brilliant. Then, in those writing groups, they criticize those who produce the common, trite, cliché, hackneyed, or banal, until they realize they share more characteristics with editors than they do writers. Those stuck in the middle with you don’t know what we don’t know, and we’re just dumb enough to think we might have something so entertaining we might eventually add a nugget that is enlightening.

“Get in, get pithy, and get out,” are the words we employ.

When we’re stuck in the middle with a quality author we get this sense that we’re joining hands with them as we walk with them on their path of discovery. If they do it right, it won’t be limited to just a facts based adventure. The quality author is still intimately familiar with being dumb on the issue, and we can hear the joy in their voice as they discover all this great knowledge. They know that fuzzy line between intellectual and dumb so well that they know how to tap dance on both sides, and we laugh right along with him. As much as we prefer to think we get it, whatever it is, we actually don’t most of the times, because we’re not as smart as those who do. We do enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, but we don’t enjoy hearing some professorial presentation from someone who knows the facts so well that they are all but reading them on a Teleprompter. Those of us stuck in the middle with you, on that fuzzy line between intelligent and dumb, are not so far removed from our misunderstandings of the world that we don’t take them for granted and no longer question the ways of the world anymore.

Rilalities XII

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Story, Harrowing Story

“Our son overdosed on Tylenol,” a mom and dad said entering a hospital’s emergency department. When they were directed to a room, they informed the nurse that the family experienced a dispute in their home. Their teenage son didn’t deal with it well. “He overdosed to teach us a lesson,” the parents informed the nurse. The argument, it turned out, was based on a huge misunderstanding. After emotions subsided, the three put the missing puzzle pieces back in place and realized what happened. (The author doesn’t know the particulars.) The parents and their son concluded their Q&A with the nurse by telling her they were in the emergency room that day to get their son’s stomach pumped.

“Okay,” the nurse said after the parents explained what happened in their home. “When did he take the Tylenol, and how much?”

“It’s been a couple days,” the mother said, “and he took almost an entire bottle.” She had the near empty bottle with her, and she informed the nurse that it was full before the incident. The mother finished that explanation with a compassionate smile directed at her son, and she mouthed, ‘It’s okay,’ to him.

The nurse made a mental note that she later shared with the doctor “that the three appeared almost happy, or maybe relieved in some odd way.”

The doctor agreed, and he said, “I think they were relieved that the heated argument was over, and they were just happy to have their son back.” 

 

“The treatment for an acetaminophen overdose is a drug called acetylcysteine,” the doctor informed them when he sat in the emergency room, about a half an hour after the nurse left, “but it only shows maximum effectiveness within an eight hour window of the overdose. We will use acetylcysteine, and we will also perform a gastric lavage or nasogastric tube suction, or what you call a stomach pump, but there are similar time constraints on the maximum effectiveness of those procedures too. The problem with ingesting so much acetaminophen and leaving it in the system for so long, is that it has been absorbed by the liver.”

“So, so, what does that mean?” the family asked.

“Our medical team is going to do everything at our disposal today,” the doctor said, “but my job is to make sure you are well aware of the facts of the situation here.”

“And the facts are?” the mother asked.

The doctor had sympathy for the patient and his parents inability to grasp the severity of the matter, and he tried to describe the ramifications as delicately and with as much sympathy as he could. He chose his words carefully while repeating everything he said about the effectiveness of acetylcysteine and stomach pumps after a couple of days, and he repeated what he said about the medical team at that hospital doing everything they could do to help their son, “But if your son took as much Tylenol as you’ve described here today, this is going to be as difficult a situation as you can imagine.”

We can only imagine how difficult this was for the doctor, and we can imagine that the parents put the doctor through it over and over in excruciating detail, asking questions we might regard as obtuse, but what was, in fact, a couple of parents and a son having a difficult time digesting the grim reality of the situation. We have to imagine that they interrogated the doctor, until he finally broke down and said, “In cases such as these, the normal life expectancy is around two-three-days.”

After the initial hysteria broke down, we can also imagine that the parents and their child enjoyed their final moments together. The reports suggest that this is a painful way to die, but if the son was able to manage the pain to a certain degree, we can imagine that the three of them did everything they could to celebrate his last days on earth. 

The team of medical professionals tried acetylcysteine, they performed the stomach pump, and anything and everything at their disposal. The teenage boy died two days later. 

I heard this story decades ago, and it still haunts me. It’s the da Vinci of stories. It doesn’t matter the angle, or perspective, it stares back at you as hard as you stare at it. How could the parents not know their child overdosed? For a couple of days? Was the argument so intense that they were not on speaking terms? I don’t know much about overdoses of this nature, but how was he not showing concerning symptoms, concerning to him in particular? We can only imagine that the parents have dreams where they spot something and do something sooner.

As much as the parents probably went through, and still go through, we have to imagine that no one involved in this situation will ever forget it. Everyone from the nurse, to the doctor, to anyone else involved still have nightmares about it. It’s also a harrowing reminder that no matter how bad the fight, or how profound the disagreement, get it out, get it all out, speak to the ones you love, and straighten it all out before it’s too late. 

Heart Attack

Those who were there know that I had a rocky relationship with my dad. We were two stubborn, ornery, Irish roosters butting heads. He kept me in check by threatening to kick me out of the house. I didn’t want to leave my home, and I didn’t want to be known as the kid who got kicked out of the home. My plan, once I got out on my own, was to never forgive him and never forget what he did to me. Years into the plan, my dad had a massive heart attack. His chances of survival were slim. I visited him and saw him hooked up to a variety of machines, and I realized that no matter how awful he was to me, he was the last parent I had left in life. He survived, barely.

We spent the next eleven years rectifying everything that happened during my youth. During these eleven years, I thanked him for assuming the role of step-father for me when I was two-years-old. That was so hard. It was difficult to avoid qualifying it, and placing “But you did this to me” type of asterisks. I left it as a standalone thank you. 

It was the best thing I ever did. I wish he would’ve lived for another ten to twenty years, but he didn’t. When he eventually passed away, however, I said goodbye to him with a heart free of anger, without the need for some sort of retribution, and hatred. If he died after the first heart attack, I would’ve been an absolute wreck. The moral of the story is, no matter how bad the fight between you and your loved ones is, get it out, speak to one another, and straighten it out before it’s too late.

Why I Write

Ever drive down the road and see a bumper sticker with exclamatory statements on their car? How about that guy who wears a T-shirt, in public, that says something meaningful? And what about that guy we all know who debates his friends on a variety of topics, with a palpable sense of frustration. “No one will listen to me,” he shouts. Everyone who talks to that guy feels his underlying sense of frustration, and they know how angry he is. We begin to interact with him less and less, because we know he can turn everything from a discussion on geopolitics to whether or not the snap pea is a delicious food into an uncomfortably confrontational argument. Every time I meet that guy, I’m so glad I’m not him anymore. That guy has no venue. He needs to express himself all over you. Whether you deem the material I discuss valuable or not, I found my venue. 

I always valued friendship over the temporary feelings one can derive through defeating another in an argument, but I felt a certain sense of frustration when no one would agree with me. When I expressed some anger and frustration, people would give me that extra look. If you’ve seen that look, you know it. That look follows you, and it says something uncomfortably revealing about you. It’s a double-take that precedes most rational, sane people just walking away. Others, who care about you, say, “Maybe you need some counseling.” Tried it, didn’t work for me. I wouldn’t say the counselor was stupid, or I am more intelligent, but she didn’t understand me. I didn’t understand me, until I found an outlet. I wouldn’t say I was complex, or anything extra ordinary, but there was no question that I needed to do something to get everything that was in me, out. 

“Music sets the sick ones free,” Andrew Wood, lead singer of Mother Love Bone, once wrote. That was me. I didn’t just love music, I needed it. I could drop the cliché that I needed music, like some people need oxygen, but it wasn’t that severe. I prefer to think of my need for music to help balance my mental stability as one might view a farmer living out on the prairie with little-to-no law enforcement. I needed music the way those farmers need to be armed to protect their land, their livestock, and their family. The only issue was I never wanted to be anything more than a music listener. I didn’t know how to play an instrument, and I didn’t have the patience to learn one. Yet, I was in desperate need of some form of self-expression in some sort of artistic manner. 

If “Music sets the sick ones free,” and I believe it does, writing was directed neurological therapy for me. Music was equivalent to a neurologist prescribing necessary over the counter pain medication. Writing, would prove the directed neurotherapy a neurologist might prescribe after repeated visits and extensive study of my reactions to everything prior.  

I was never ill, compromised, or depressed in any substantial manner, but I had an internal itch that ruined days. Writing felt substantial to me. I wanted it all, but when it didn’t come, I kept writing. I was no prodigy. I wrote some awful stuff, but I loved it, needed it, and I kept wanting to do it no matter what. Writing anything and everything I could think up is what has led me to the definition of sanity I now know.

No Hugging and No Learning

When I watched Seinfeld, I had no idea why it appealed to me so much. It was funny, of course, but there were dozens of situation comedies on the air at the time, and hundreds of them throughout history. Seinfeld was special to me, and I had no idea why. When I learned that the writer’s room had a “no hugging and no learning” thematic approach, I said, “That’s it” to myself.

Seinfeld was special, because it wasn’t “special”. Everyone from the creators, writers, on down to the actors made no effort to be special, nor did they add special ingredients into the mix. The special ingredients for most writers on most situation comedies involved the “very special episodes”. These episodes made special connections to the audience through special issues. A character, in their narrative, discovers that they’ve been so wrong for so long that they now question their foundation, and the audience understands, agrees, cries, hugs, and leaps to their feet in “clapture”. Clapture is a framing technique used by comedy writers to get the (Emmy!) audience to clap with laughter, or to agree with them more than laugh. I didn’t realize, until Seinfeld, how cringeworthy those special, meaningful messages were. The Seinfeld writers maintained that there would be no hugging, no learning, and if I might add, no special understandings in their show. They just tried to be funny. When we watch such shows, we always wonder if they reflect our values, or if we begin to reflect theirs. I think Seinfeld, more than any other sitcom I’ve watched, reflects my values. I prefer a good steak with very little seasoning and nothing else! Unless steak sauce is used to cover up the quality of the meat, I want nothing else on my steak. If you’re going to come at me and tell me what you really think of me, I prefer that you come bold with no qualifiers. I also prefer music that is complicated, fun, interesting, creative, relatively brilliant, unique, and utterly meaningless. Don’t tell me what you think of the domestic economy of Istanbul, the mating habits of the emu, or anything else that you wished you put in your college thesis. Just write lyrics that fit the music and be done with it. Seinfeld, in my opinion, met all of those standards.  

You Could Be the Entertainment. You Might Be the Genius 

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“A genius is the one most like himself.” —Thelonius Monk.  

We’ve all heard jokes about you being original. “You think you’re original? I wonder what percentage of the nearly 8 billion in the world consider themselves original? What percentage of the billions who lived before us thought they were original?”

What is original? Is it even possible to be original? Was Homer, author of the Odyssey original? What about Leonardo da Vinci, Dostoyevsky, or The Beatles? Most music critics stopped using the word ‘o’ from their reviews, because anytime they drop the word, the snipers come out to talk about all the influences they hear. If it’s impossible to be original, is it possible to create something uniquely personal? Is it possible to take all of your influences, artistic and otherwise, and do your thing so often that you find you? Will it be without influence? What is? No work of art is free of influence, and no influence is free from personal interpretation. Should you even try to be original if it’s impossible? With nearly 8 billion in the world and billions who have preceded us in history, the chances of you being somewhat redundant or derivative are pretty high?

If you can get passed the lengthy confusing originality-is-not-possible algorithm, you could do something that is so you that you might feel naked when it’s over. You might want to consider deleting the vulnerabilities that incriminate you, or you might not. If you leave it all in, it’s possible that some long-dead artist, who many consider one of the most original artists to walk to planet, might’ve considered you ingenious.    

Everyone started out wanting to be somebody else. We don’t start out all pure and raw. We lacked knowledge, skills, and the sense of security necessary to expose ourselves completely. We felt icky about ourselves when we started. We were insecure, we feared we had no talent, and we thought we were boring, or at least we’re not as entertaining as that guy.

Look at him, he’s got it all figured out. Every woman I know wants to sit with him and chat, he’s got a wad of dough, and everybody likes him. And funny, ohmigosh, if I could be just a little bit like him for one minute of one day, people might want to be around me, they might like me, and they might read me. We add a pinch of ourselves along the way. The other guy over there, he’s all calm, cool, and collected. He’s radiating self-possession. If I could wrap his aura around my neck for just one night, it could all be different. We add a dash of ourselves to it. At some point, in the painfully gradual process, we shed their skin and become more like ourselves, and if we become more like ourselves than anyone else can, it might be ingenious. Monk’s quote might be my new favorite quote.  

2) “We might as well be ourselves,” Oscar Wilde said, “everybody else is taken.”  

“I wish I could be more like Jarod,” Todd said. “He doesn’t care if anyone likes him.”  

Most of us don’t say such things aloud. We might think it. We might think Jarod has something ingenious going on, but we don’t talk to him to find out what he has. It’s understood. We develop a construction from afar, and we try to become it.

I talked to one of my constructed images once. As much as I tried to avoid it, I couldn’t help but convey how much I thought of him. I didn’t say anything along those lines, but I was so obvious about it that I could see it on his face. We were walking away from football practice, and he started dropping a slew of swear words on me. He wasn’t cursing at me. He was swearing in the smoothest manner he could find. I picked up a strange vibe. He appeared to be trying to live up to whatever image he thought I had of him. The idea that he tried so hard confused me, because he was the guy everyone wanted to be, and I was the anonymous nerd who faded into the background of whatever room I was in. I needed to develop skills to stand out. This guy accomplished it by just being him, or so I thought. In our brief exchange, I realized that I didn’t want to be him anymore than I wanted to be me. I realized that if I was going to continue to try to live up to the constructed images I had of people, the pursuit was probably better than the prize. I also realized that if I was going to project images upon guys like him, I probably shouldn’t talk to them.  

“You’re the entertainment,” I told Todd after he wrapped up his gripes about Jarod. “You’re the entertainment in the room, and you don’t even know it.” 

3) “You are who you are when nobody’s watching.” ― Stephen Fry

My goal in life is to control situations as often as I can. If I encounter a situation fraught with failure, I take over, because I would rather blame myself for failure than someone else. I see parents put their kids in awkward situations, and when these kids fail, the parents are shocked. They evaluate their kid’s failure by their own standards. I might over correct at times, and I might be what they call a helicopter parent, but I either try to frame failure according to age, or I try to prevent failure by taking control of the situation.

When my boy went to the refreshment stand in a restaurant to refill his cup, every instinct told me to just take the cup from him and do it myself, but I knew he had to learn, and I wanted to see who he was when he didn’t know anyone was watching. I stood back where he couldn’t see me, and I watched him. As he refilled his cup, I took a step back. It was painful to stand back and watch, but I couldn’t stop looking. After he spilled, I stepped back further. I wanted to see if he would clean it up himself. I wanted to see if he would look around after the spill. I didn’t realize until I smelled it, but I accidentally backed into the sphere of influence of an elderly woman. My first thought, when she expelled gas on me, was this might be her defense mechanism, warning me that I was too close. I thought of the octopus expelling an ink cloud to thwart the approach of predators. She couldn’t know if I was a predator, because she didn’t know me, so she probably considered it better safe than sorry when she let it go. I abided by her silent admonition by giving her distance. My boy cleaned up his mess without looking around, and he double checked his work to make sure his mess was all cleaned up. I made the right move by allowing him to make his own mistakes, and he unknowingly defined his character for me, but I paid a price for it. 

4) “Be it a song or a casual conversation. To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservations. Your words, once heard, they can place you in a faction. My words may disturb, but at least there’s a reaction.” Slash, Dave Lank, and Axl Rose. 

Back when I talked to my constructed image of the star football player, I considered offensive vulgarity the more honest approach. No matter how confusing I considered his effort, I thought he was being real with me. He fit the prototype teenager, but we don’t see that when we’re teens. We were influenced by movies, TV, and music. We had lists of which movies used swear words, and how many times they swore in such movies. If we were movie critics, we would’ve awarded stars accordingly. We also loved music, and while we all appreciated great pop songs, a song without at least a little vulgarity or innuendo, too safe. We wanted to hear dangerous, risky music, and we craved that in all artistic venues. We demanded the same of ourselves. The more vulgar and crude the more honest. We wanted to hand the holy grail up to the person who didn’t care if we considered them offensive. The truth is offensive, we thought. “I speak truth, and what does it say about you that you can’t deal with it.” What does it say about you that you said it? “I gotta be me!” So, you’re an offensive person? It took us a while, but we realized that a cup is handed down to the artist, filled with their offense.  

Due to the fact that the material nature of Rilaly.com is relative and subjective, we cannot guarantee our readers will be entertained or enlightened. We are introducing our new insurance policy that a reader can purchase if they don’t know if they want to take a risk by reading it. If you are not entertained, or enlightened, we will refund any amount the reader paid to us to read this, minus the cost of the non-refundable insurance.