Here’s a series of events:
1) I discovered that Netflix Streaming had all of Comedy Central’s half hour comedy specials. I love comedy the way people love music.
2) I watch an older show featuring Slovin and Allen – a comedy duo that mainly tackled old comedy duo tropes and updated them, with some real brilliant pieces. (http://bit.ly/9QZ0km)
3) After I watch that, I see that Leo Allen of Slovin and Allen has a Slovin-free standup special. This is kind of a shame because I’ve seen some of their other non-comedy central things and really liked those also. Really smart funny stuff. So I watch Allen’s standup and it’s really good. It’s not as good as his Slovin and Allen stuff but still good.
4) He has a joke about going into a store, while carrying something that the store sells – i.e. going into a bookstore while carrying a book and having a mild panic attack about it. He twists it into a so-so punch line, but the set up is what hit me.
5) I do this. The last time I carried a book into a bookstore was two weeks ago and it sent me into a half hour long conversation with the book shop guy in my head. It happened from the moment I realized “Hey, I should go to the bookstore and see if anything jumps out. Oh, I hope they don’t think I’m stealing this book…” And then it literally spirals down into a fictional conversation wherein I am shouting at the book store guy “IF I WALK HOME AND GET THE RECIPT AND HAVE TO COME BACK HERE AND SHOW IT TO YOU I WANT A FREE FUCKING BOOK!”
6) Oh good, I’m crazy.
7) Well, at least I don’t do that all the time.
8) Oh no wait.
9) I do that all day long, every day.
10) I knew that I did this, and that I’m a little in my head about things. But this dumb joke made me really think about how often I have these entirely-in-my-head conversations with people in which:
a. The conversations are almost always conflict-based.
b. The conflict is almost always irrational in nature.
c. The conflict almost always escalates to the point of yelling.
d. I am the fantastically rational hero.
e. They are the fantastically irrational villain.
f. They are completely beyond my capability to exercise in the real world.
i. Meaning, not only am I not quick witted enough to have such arguments.
ii. The vast majority of all of my real-life arguments lead to me being too frustrated to say anything whatsoever.
iii. I’m pretty nice and realize that shop-keepers and other strangers have enough problems and don’t need any guff from some bald beardo.
11) I have decided to try to document when these things happen so that I am not simply letting all of my crazy grow black and mossy while it poisons me and instead post them here for you to gape at. I’m thinking about categorizing them under a separate heading or something that will clearly separate them from the fiction that I don’t write enough of.
a. I am trying to work on a book. I think by the time I am finished that the niche it would fit into will be full of other people doing a similar thing. I am going to try to finish it anyway. It’s called “Taser Hawk – Barbs of Justice” and it’s about an anthropomorphic taser-cop who can’t keep from tasering everybody and his struggle to find friendship and understanding and then he falls in love with a jellyfish.
b. That’s not what it’s about.
