Second, I despair.
Third, I wonder, “is it ‘third’, or is it ‘thirdly’?”
Fourth, out of my desperation, I analyze the cause of my inability to get started writing.
Fifth, I write about that cause, since I realize that I have nothing else to write about, apart from bad beer, dead pigeons, and the other gender, and I’ve probably already said all that I should about those, for now.
This month the culprit is the Capital T that is followed by the Capital Gosh Condemned V. To be precise, almost as soon as I became housed I procured an “idiot box”. I am right now on the verge of getting cable. After years of what my therapist had declared a cure I have suffered from what is undeniably a relapse: I have become re-addicted to Letterman and his Stupid Human Tricks. I have started watching Simpson reruns every day. I have to watch 11 at 11 on 7 every night. I no longer have a will of my own. Something has pierced my neck. Something is controlling my cerebrum. I have the urge to scream. I start to bond with paranoid schizophrenics. The stories from the X-files seem reasonable to a guy who has gotten used to watching Jerry Springer. Aliens among us? Heck yeah.
I recently heard an “anchorperson” on a TV news program say something like this -- “And now, Jim has some information that will help you avoid being swept off a mountain by an avalanche.” I wasn’t even able to write my own name for half an hour after that...
I thought I heard “and now Uncle Jim will tell me how even an infantile adult-in-age-only such as myself can avoid ending up like any of a bunch of reckless thrill seekers more than willing to tax the resources of State rescue agencies without bothering to assume the responsibility of paying in advance for the privilege.”
If I were a real adult, I thought, I would climb mountains daily. And people would CARE if I slipped, or if some stinking avalanche disturbed my climb. There would be hundreds of people concerned with every breath I took, for fear that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen and might have to live the rest of my life stupid, as if I was raised in the projects eating lead paint. Hundreds of Mountaineer Club Types would be willing to trek through miles of knee deep snow up 110 degree inclines just to deliver beef-jerky and/or French Cognac to me.
Well, guess what?! I don’t LIKE beef-jerky! Meanwhile, where were any of you heroes any of the four years I was homeless and freezing my ass off sleeping in toxic waste dumps?
I know the answer already. When you weren’t watching television you were climbing mountains or you were rescuing other jocks like yourselves who had tried to climb mountains. You were too busy for me. Just like now, I am watching the Simpsons, and can’t be bothered with news about someone’s failed attempt at literal upward mobility who brought his troubles on himself by taking unnecessary risks.
Ha, ha, just kidding! “Taking unnecessary risks” is another way of saying “being born,” right?
Sixth, when that goes nowhere, I resort to a totally irrational non sequitur:
For example --
Speaking of being born, that reminds me that I am male. And I realize that I haven’t batted people in the head about it recently, whence a poem --
We men don’t need large bladders --
We piss on everything, that’s our job!
-- or something like that. Trouble with that one is, what rhymes with bladders besides ladders, and what do ladders have to do with it? Do I really want to bring Tool Time into the discussion? Of course not. I preferred Seinfeld.
And why did I prefer Seinfeld? Because there were no fathers even trying to know best on Seinfeld. There were no Uncle Jims. Think of it: a sitcom that acted less like a sitcom than the nightly news!
Tonight at eleven -- Uncle Jim tells how you can avoid having your campsite bulldozed by the City of Seattle! The answer just may surprise you!
