so...what the hell happened to me?...i feel like
i did when i woke up in the middle of the road in central arkansas…my breath
smelling like week-old roadkill stuffed with really expensive cheese...as i
recall, i lost twelve days on that one...good christ!...its been over a year
this time...i cant be absolutely certain what happened and i may never be...whenever i am absolutely certain that I may never be absolutely certain about something, i seek guidance from the real thinkers of the world…it stands to reason that
anyone who has sores on their elbows from sitting at a bar drinking and
bullshitting all day, must be doing some real thinking, and must be good for
some form of guidance…so i assembled a dream team of medical/lifestyle advisers down at
the pickled pepper for a consultation…after some lengthy, alcohol-soaked
discussions of all the evidence, after beer-tears shed and accidental punches thrown, we concluded that i suffered what can only be called
an intellectual coma...a traumatic event overwhelms the mind, pushing it past
the point of critical, meaningful thought...the brain and body continue to
function... but the mind and soul are hiding under the bed as if their
alcoholic uncle henry got called in to babysit at the last minute…you can still
drive to work…you can still stand erect while brad relentlessly refers to
matters regarding the local sporting distractions in first person plural…sporadically
staring downward, shaking his head and interjecting his mantra “we need defense, man”…you can even still listen and
understand as shirley irrevocably eradicates forty minutes of your life, verbally molesting you with every last detail of a thirty minute show that you
just told her you already watched… gone, however, is the ability to think “wow!
brad and shirley really are assholes”…autopilot lifestyle...on...........the final thing that i remember was attending my weekly transcendental twerking
class back in may of last year [the thursday class was being overrun by
snobbish wine swirlers who were just out to prove something, so i switched to wednesdays] ...notwithstanding the
countless breakthroughs of medical science in the field of twerking, there are still
many unknowns...based on the current volume of data regarding the physiological,
psychological and spiritual effects of a really intense twerking session, it is
possible that i entered an altered state of consciousness known as hyper-realistic perception...this occurs when you experience such clarity of mind that the bullshit of our modern
existence is stripped of all of its apparent "normalcy" and seen for
the madness that it truly is...this was my trauma...i remember being reborn
into a world where people take the time to gather together in groups so that
they can ignore each other while they facebook [yes...it's a friggin verb now] or text with people who didnt even bother to
take the time to sit down and ignore them...a world where parents fed their
children a strict diet of saturated fat and high-fructose corn syrup so that
they would be weak and lazy enough to sit all day playing expensive video games, watching traffic camera clips of people being killed by trains or learning how to properly ignore people with their iphones...this way, both parents could
go out and work just to be able to afford the latest video games, computers and iphones
to forestall their children’s hatred for abandoning them [thats
not the disturbing part...they actually wondered why their kids ended up being
sociopaths, but i digress]...the world i saw was teeming with people who were so desperate for
the smallest crumb of eminence or recognition...so hungry for anything that could verify that they truly were the superstar that the lifelong marketing blitz had convinced them that they are, that they made pseudo-celebrities
of themselves by endlessly updating their status or obsessively tweeting out
selfies (strategically hashtagged for maximum exposure, of course) to a world
that couldnt possibly give a shit less that they just had a yummy lunch or that
theyre feeling a little blue today *sigh*... this was a world where everyone
was trying to be anything other than what they really were…anything...people moving, living and thinking in
herds…each one trying to act like everyone else in the group, leaving only some lowest
common denominator of a human being…every personality trait focus group tested and deemed safe for public consumption...laughable caricatures of who they wish they were...bland, insipid, vanilla people who would think, say
or do nothing offensive, unexpected or out of the ordinary for fear of being seen
as someone less than enthusiastic about conformity...thereby risking rejection, and ultimately the solitude required to help them realize that their lives were swirling down the bowl while they chased someone else's dream…wave after wave of unabashed, mind-raping
idiocy assaulted my senses…i snapped………the first thing that I felt can only be
described as going from a normal existence, standing here in the earth’s
atmosphere to being encased in cottage cheese (or greek yogurt for you trendy types) within a split
second…the all-encompassing pressure of raw stupidity rushed in on me…a tsunami of insanity…it
was too much for my mind to bear…the next (and last) thing that I felt was
ridicule…as if the simple act of perceiving the madness of people, somehow made
them aware of my scrutiny of their “normal” behavior…for which they chastised, belittled or otherwise laughed at me…I was instantaneously inundated
with visions from my past... pointing out the everyday, beacon-like stupidity of people
who would never argue against the point that I was making, but would invariably
call me an idiot and deride me for “thinking too much”…hmmmm...and just as I was fading out, one final
critical thought flashed through my mind which set my life in motion for the
next year…”when surrounded by idiots, the idiots will call you an idiot”…there
could be only one course of action…I opened a parking lot that sells "art"…the art of parking…to be continued
