Mammoth Sunday Spectacular #1: The Brains, Bird Shit, and Worms Issue

Slow moving in the early afternoon as my body struggles to rid itself of various toxins. My synapses are worn to nubs and are failing to transmit essential messages to the Central Processor.  I am unable to communicate with my User.  Tron has gone missing.  Our mission, I fear, has been compromised.

I have never been a fan of the Sabbath.  The simple knowledge that millions of people across this country are hunched over and praying feverishly to deaf gods is enough to send me into a talespin.  The only escape is to concern oneself primarily with the process of healing, which makes Saturday night the opportune time to overload my systems so that the morning will be, in some manner, bearable.  I'll fight the headache-nausea tag team any day if it means avoiding other less palatable thoughts.

So here I am--hiding out in a friend's basement with the intention of getting some serious work done.  Work that would fall by the wayside at home because of external stimuli I would, otherwise, be unable to ignore.  I know I will be smoked out of here soon, though, by hunger or cabin fever.  My hands are already shaking.  I have expelled most of the excretory demons by now and will soon have to replenish my systems if I am to tarry forth into the Shadows.  With a bit of luck, I will be fortunate enough to establish normal thought patterns again and avoid this stilted, uninteresting gibberish.  Go it alone.  Have faith in your methods.  Maintain.

The morning newspaper proves to be of little help as well.  The Daily Herald is nothing more than a collection of swill and backwash from more formidable sources, and its Arts & Entertainment section has a full-page photo of Britney Spears' brilliant, shaved head plastered across the front.  It reaffirms the dull insanity we have failed to overcome.  Witless teenage pop queens rule the cultural air waves.  It reminds me of my days as a pizza delivery man--one of those iconic American jobs in which one feels truly appreciated.  I was waiting on the stoop of a pristine two-story house, no doubt owned by someone with Money, and overheard a spoiled 17-year-old girl bitching to her mother.  "Brad and Jen broke up, Mom.  My life is totally over," she said.

I was still holding the pizza and seriously considered scraping a little piece of bird shit off one of the shutters and tucking it lovingly under the cheese.  She deserves worse, I thought.

At the same time, I felt that she couldn't be blamed.  She was no dumber than me or you.  We all subscribe to our own brands of hogwash, many of them posing as cerebral alternatives to the mainstream.  Reality states that there is enough money to be made among factions of the counterculture to make it just as whorish as anything.  The world is peopled with fools, and we are part of that joyless demographic.  In fact, it is the only one.

Profundity remains a rare thing.  I am beginning to think more and more that True Meaning exists only in the declaration of its antithesis.

But we are here, after all.  We are wandering around this rock in a desperate search for substance--for a point of reference whatever it may be--and for good or ill, we must make the best of it.  Mustn't we?  Perhaps it is the existential nightmare of one's early twenties that proliferates these thoughts of hopeless inanity whereas people with a few more years under their belt have already come to understand such simple notions and accept them as given.

Hell.  The medical community might even be on my side with this one.  I am an editorial assistant for the most prominent neuroradiology journal in the world and was speaking to one of the doctors about a month ago.  "You're just becoming a real person," he told me.  Initially, I took offense to his statement and said something snide about the bullish greed of doctors, and while most Medical People might be just that--avaricious cosmetic merchants and fear profiteers--he might have a point.  The human brain stops developing around the age of twenty-four.  Who knows what mad, irresponsible hallucinations of post-pubescence will remain pertinent in the forthcoming years of full-fledged adulthood?  Then again, there seems to be a certain loss of fire as years pass and grow exceedingly dull.  It is difficult to believe that we do not become more diluted with time and willing to make certain gutless concessions we failed to even consider during our youth.  I can already feeling it happen to me.

And with that, I must leave you, friends.  My faculties, I fear, have been spent for the day and this odd, Parkinsonian quiver is tightening its grip on my extremities.  If I fail to replenish my fuel reserves, it could mean twelve more hours of bodily weakness and mental atrophy.  A day's worth of useless floundering, and I mustn't waste the sunlight.

Verily.  I have matters to which I must attend before the worms take me.  After all, they require a balanced diet just like the rest of us.