say brandon

"say brandon, what did the bartender tell the guy who walked into the bar wearing spark plugs around his neck?"

"um, no charge?"

"..."

"what?"

"he said, are you trying to start something?"

no one can tell if i'm joking anymore. BECAUSE THEY'RE DEAD. (that would be my standard one liner if i were a sociopathic stand up comic, by the way)

What a strange place this is, this point in my life. I am still mildly holding onto the dream of some greater life. I still harbor shower fantasies of accepting awards and signing autographs and practicing genuine modesty amidst flashing bulbs, and my god, I still write and write and write and live in the shoes of my characters and mourn and celebrate and learn. But most of what I do is delve deeper into a career that is wildly fulfilling in its own tame, semi-caged way. God how good I have it, in ways that so many do not. It keeps calling me, this funny little vocation that no one understands, and people like me so much that they are willing to trip and fall into grievous, regrettable error.

This is not how life works, but what if birth were like being launched into a new universe you were entirely prepared for. You had estimates and scans and histories and demographics and regional dialects. Instead of being dropped like a little bird into the atmosphere, you landed like a god among babes.

Days like today make it seem pyrrhic. You'd be well ahead of your peers, but whom could you befriend? To whom could you spill busted circuitry and budget memory and short cuts?

Some days I feel like I am the only person who ever made a mistake. But then you witness our ungodly need to confess. The old gods were so much better in this regard. They made our shortcomings seem so much more mundane by comparison. And thrilling. Zeus seduced Leda in the form of a swan. Gods bless you, you crazy, uninhibited Greeks. Let's do it that way from now on.