Great Scott, Mediocre Andrew

I realized the other day that every banal, insignificant comment or thought I've ever had can easily become more profound if I think of it as the opening sentence to a novel:

- Sadly, all my life, I have never been able to properly chop onions.

- He sure is taking a long time in the shower, I thought solemnly to myself.

- My mind raced as I desperately tried to coax the memories of who played the black guy on Matlock; by the end, I had given up all hope.

- When I came to, clothes scattered the ground and an unfamiliar stench wafted like a stiff breeze on a dead morning. My glasses had been placed in a rather unorthodox location. I had not a clue as to where, but my very sight was dependant upon their retrieval. This was it.

- Tossing, he tried to convince himself he could get away with hitting the snooze one more time. "This is the last time, I swear," begged his mind like a brother-in-law in need of quick cash. He'd heard that one before, though that did little to prevent him from slothfully reaching his left hand out from the covers and shutting off Hail To The Thief for another 6 minutes.

- As the naked women continued to bounce and sway on his laptop, suddenly Jack came to the realization that he should be searching for his backpack, not his towel.

- My last fart was truly tremendous, like a wave of foetor crying up for the heavens like so many lost souls. Bean burritoes tend to make me especially poetic, at least in the flatulence department.

Suddenly, my life is a book with an intricate and exciting plot that needn't actually go anywhere, so long as there is the implication it goes somewhere. Who knows, playing Tetris could lead to some gigantic and interesting misadventure, so long as it's phrased correctly.

Precociousness Is The Female Taint

When I was a kid, I used to imagine the entire world was just one big, incredibly well-animated cartoon. The photorealistic drawings were drawn by hand, frame by frame, by a series of skilled artists, whose attention to detail was such that this cartoon was entirely indistinguishable from real life. The show was about me, seen through my eyes and following my life 24 hours a day. The egoist ramblings of Truman Show style "the whole world revolves around me!" philosophies were yet to emerge, and my concept was different from this anyhow. I was not a real person trapped in a fake world; I myself was fake as well. This entire show of my life was invented by a team of creative animators, and I was simply a charecter as was everyone else. Several times I would specifically look at something visually arresting or detailed simply to give the animators a harder time. This was kind of an odd and muddy concept, because even though I was a charecter being driven by the animators, I somehow had complete control over what I did. I could not control the world around me, that was to the animators discretion. Instead, I could simply go through my normal life as though it were a normal life, and it may as well have been as it was entirely indistinguishable from whatever the "real world" was. If you were to look at a single cel of the animation, it would look like a photograph, but it was a drawing, one done so realistically that it was impossible to seperate as a drawing. Often I would look around me and simply be impressed by the skill of those who were drawing my life.

Something that always struck me as odd, however, was the fact that the show revolved around me. I would have days which were not particularly interesting but must have still demanded an intense amount of work to produce. A day where I sit around playing video games is not going to appear very interesting onscreen, and yet painstaking amounts of time must've gone into creating this rather dull episode. Each day was an episode, and some were frankly not that great. Why would anyone even watch a show about me? If these folks had the ability to draw this well and create such an amazing product, why on Earth wouldn't they pick a subject that garnered more interest? Who greenlighted this thing anyway? It must cost a fortune.

This led me to thinking about the audience: If I was merely an animated program, there must be some sort of viewer of this. How does that work? How does someone watch me? To be a fictional charecter and still exist was kind of a strange notion: I could still feel, taste, smell, hear. I knew that I must be alive, but how could I be if I was invented? One theory I had was that the audience hooks themselves up to what essentially would be a VR machine and they not only see what I see but feel what I feel. This whole project seemed absolutely fascinating to me. Was I, then, myself? Was I someone watching the program? Could I feel what this charecter felt so fully that I became lost inside them? Am I not myself, essentially? Some voice actor was playing my voice in some studio in Hollywood, no doubt, while each of my friends and family and everyone I came into contact with were simply supporting roles. The people I met on a day to day basis were all created and designed by some artist somewhere, probably after a series of rough sketches. Even if I never saw them again, the blip they made on my radar likely took a valiant effort to put forth. I never stopped respecting the amount of work put into this project. I felt true appreciation for all that went into making this life and all that I considered myself a part of. I and everything around me was art.

The fact that the writers would let me find out about this by allowing me to think about it left me curious but somewhat sure of my autonomy. I must be in control of my own life if I am even able to ponder this. However, I suppose that even if I figured out for certain that my life was simply an animated program, there wouldn't really be a damn thing I could do about it. Some staff writer with a philosophy degree likely introduced this concept into the show, dancing atop the fourth wall like an existential Humpty Dumpty. I could never prove consequentially, but the audience would see me playing with the concept and take interest in my Verfremdungseffekt. My show was a drama, a comedy, a romance, a life. The writers took on the daunting project of creating and following the life of a single individual, me, by not telling a story of something I've done or giving a history or cramming my biography into some 3 hour movie. Instead, for the past 20 years, every day has been documented and presented as is; no particular overarching theme, no twist endings, no plot devices. Simply my life, as I live it. Good, bad, interesting, uninteresting, arbitrary or meaningful, this is me. This is my life and how I've lived it. My personal moments of shame, angst, boredom, apathy, depression, lonliness, guilt, rolling on the floor in tears, even wiping my ass, all were on display for everyone to see. My 8 year old penis has been on some big screen somewhere, surely giving the anti-child pornography people something to go on about. This must be rated NC-17, or perhaps a new ratings system was invented. The thought of a rating made me think about how odd it is we even have ratings: this is a life and what has actually happened. It cannot be edited if it is to stay true to the concept, and in so you're going to see some things that may shock, offend or disgust. But that's life.

I came to realize my memories were essentially just reruns, my highs and lows were all probably during sweeps week, when I cried they knew, when I laughed they knew. When I was born was the first episode, the last episode I will die. I sometimes thought that this was the thought process of a child who watched too much television, that their entire life would be framed this way. Frankly, the thought made me appreciate life for what it is: complicated, detailed, interconnected, long. Most shows don't last 20 years, and mine doesn't have any sign of stopping anytime soon. Whether or not it even garners any more interest, it's still on, and that's what matters. Whenever I'm down on myself I like to go back and relive these memories of childhood, when I was amazed by life and how spectacular it could be sometimes. Just as there are downs there are going to be ups. At the very least, the sheer fact that I am alive and on this planet is, frankly, pretty amazing.