The Trajectory of Myopia

My posts in here as of late have become less regular than Wilford Brimley, and for that I am somewhat apologetic. I could blame it on the birth of my second child, and really, few could criticize me for this, but it has just as much to do with my being a lazy and insular bastard as anything else.

I’ve got a chip on my shoulder that has so much heft it’s a fucking miracle I can carry the bitch around. I don’t really attribute it to any particular hardships that I’ve had to endure. I mean, I’ve had my share, but I think I just have been cursed with the type of mind that is able to flesh out and fully define that which is ugly about you, about me, and about the ugly fucking world that we share.

I’ve spent the bulk of my life in one form of hiding or another, so establishing a presence via my writing and then vanishing for an undetermined length of time is no big surprise when you get down to it.

It’s funny what people value in their lives. I took some time out today to peruse the “next blog” feature in Blogger, and I’m here to tell you, people are so fucked up. Every stupid idea imaginable is represented through the world of blogs. And the whole deal makes me think of an idea I’ve pondered about films, which I think is applicable here. Whenever I watch a terrible film, which is to say, whenever I watch a film that is so bad it causes me pain, I always end up pondering the following.

It completely baffles me to imagine how outrageously horrible films are made. I mean, think about it. We’re talking about a process here. In my fevered mind, I think it goes something like the following:

Some guy named Brad, who moved to L.A. five years ago, and is tired of mopping jizz off the floors of the 24 Hour Wankstand, decides that he wants to bite the bullet and make that movie he’s dreamt of making since he was just a wee date rapist back in Bumsniff, Montana, or wherever it was he was spawned. His big idea? Something about aging porn star Marilyn Chambers who plays an aging porn star named Marilyn who also happens to run a whorehouse. Brad’s idea is to take this highly imaginative concept and develop it into a soft-porn masterpiece featuring loin-cooling scenes of badly simulated sex interspersed with chunks of dialogue so poor one could easily accept that it was written with a computer program that randomly generates lines. Naturally Brad has spent years working on the script, software free. Since Brad spends an inordinate amount of time in strip clubs, he just happens to make the acquaintance of a guy named Diego who, when he isn’t dealing coke, makes his living producing small-budget films for HBO. Against what any sane person might consider the odds, Diego likes the idea. He gets Brad to get Marilyn to agree to blow Diego on the front seat of his Maserati the next night, and we are off to the pictures! What follows is the production of a total and utter waste of time, money, and energy. But this is the part that simply blows me away. These people actually go through with it. The cast is hired; the crew is brought over from Diego’s production company. The digi-cams are charged up, and the sets are paid for. Real people with real aspirations and real dreams spend real time making this real piece of shit. It clearly has no redeeming value whatsoever, but yet it sees its way through to release. It’s a direct-to-cable picture, but HBO is on it, and if you are so sexually frustrated and unimaginative that this sort of thing turns you on, then there you will be at four in the morning spanking it to this abomination. And the worst part of all this tomfoolery is that the world not only tolerates this, it encourages, if not nurtures it.

So in a roundabout way, this is the way the blogosphere, and by extension reality, takes place. Armies of mindless retards with nothing to say of any value to anyone else are out there letting you know just how much they love Chester Donnington of Linkin Park, or waxing philosophical about the newest Chrysler, or spamming the world over with pictures of Debra Winger’s pubes from 1812, or whatever useless pandering nonsense you can imagine. And we, the silent consumers, are complicit.

I realize that we all see the world the way that works best for us. If you were to spend the rest of your life in a prison, you might learn to appreciate the little things. In this situation, micro becomes macro, and macro ceases to exist. The big picture is even hazier than it is for those on the outside. If you never had two cents to rub together, a little is a whole lot. I can appreciate this concept. My mother had very little to give my brother and I, and we did fine with what we had. Sure, I am a completely fucked-up individual, I admit that, but I firmly believe that without someone as amazing as my mother in my life I would either be dead, in jail, or god knows what.

So taking all of that into account, I still burn with the fact that the world, and in particular, my world, is populated so heavily with total fucking morons. They’re fucking everywhere you turn. Open a door, and boom… moron! Turn around… moron! Answer the phone… you guessed it you moron. It’s like a plague, until you start to think that maybe the moron is you. I’m the one who struggles daily with my discomfort with the world. I am in a perpetual state of existential discomfort. I am virtually defined by my inability to feel comfortable in a world in which those who feel the rest of us owe them a huge debt walk with their heads hung high.

I’ve spent my lifetime refining and perfecting my ability to blend in and not make too many waves. It’s like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If I fuck around too much, I may be spotted and then it’s all over for me. If I speak my true mind I’d be living under some bridge, fighting guys with no teeth for the gristle pulled from a restaurant dumpster. I don’t need that kind of attention.

I’ve never had the fortitude to do what I need to do to thrive in this world. I’ve just never had it in me. I don’t know if it’s genetic or if it’s something I picked up along the way. I do know, however, that it blows ass. So maybe I’ve been looking at it all wrong. Maybe thinking, and feeling real feelings, and being sensitive to the ways in which humanity works, is all horseshit. Maybe tying one poorly executed event to the next and making a life of it isn’t a symptom of a person with depth and true value. Maybe all of the traits that I have assumed to place so high in my scheme of things are nothing more than a heap of shit. Maybe in my never ending quest to find meaning in what is clearly to me an unenviable cloud of confusing stupidity and reptilian carnal urges expressed through self-serving acts of myopic carelessness, I have discovered the worst secret of them all…

I am the moron.

Goodnight.