Monthly Archives: June 2012

I was a history major

I was just going through a bunch of my old college papers and I stumbled across this gem. (I got an A+)

Everybody thinks that Julius Caesar was killed by his friend Brutus, who, with a group of likeminded conspirators, staged a coup against the powerful Roman Emperor. But that’s not how it happened at all. The real story is: Brutus was one of those childhood friends that Caesar just couldn’t seem to give the slip as he grew to adulthood. As Caesar rocketed up the Roman political ladder, his mom and Brutus’s mom, who happened to be best friends, always kept bugging him, telling him, “Don’t forget about your friend Brutus!” And so Brutus was constantly tagging along, asking the stupidest of questions and always sneezing way too loud, unnecessarily loud really, without ever even bothering to cover his mouth. Then he would wait for somebody to say the Roman equivalent of “God bless you,” but nobody ever did, so he would just say, “Thank you” to nobody at all. And Caeser would just roll his eyes as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?” but nobody ever entertained these complaints, because everyone was thinking, “Hey, don’t look at us Caesar. He’s your friend. You’re the one who keeps bringing him around everywhere.”

As it turned out, Caesar eventually reached a point in his career where his friendship with Brutus shaped up to be quite the political dilemma. It was hard to visualize the Roman Emperor as a leader, as this pillar of strength, when his idiot best friend was constantly knocking things over or picking his nose or starting a round of applause before Caesar had gotten even halfway through a speech. There were whispers of more ambitious leaders, rumors of a leader without a bozo sidekick, someone who could take reign of the empire without having to constantly apologize because his friend drank way too much wine and got up in the middle of the night, really drunk, and, mistaking the imperial guest quarters for the bathroom, peed all over the visiting delegation of Persian dignitaries.

The time to take definitive action had passed years ago. Caesar was really in a bind. He couldn’t just cut Brutus loose, because everyone in the empire would see it as a selfish, dirty, political move. It would be yet another sign of weakness. He would be a total sell-out, a fair-weather friend and fair-weather leader. The only way out of this was some sort of a crazy plan, one that would both get rid of Brutus while at the same time display an unshakable grip on power.

Caesar came up with an ingenious plan. He would tell Brutus to invite a bunch of his friends over for a party. After everyone was good and drunk, like really drunk, like blackout drunk, he would take Brutus alone on a walk through the woods. Once they got far enough away from the palace, Caesar would knock Brutus out; a mild blow to the back of the head ought to have done the trick. Then Caesar would disappear, but not before leaking a memo to the Roman press, signed by Brutus, detailing his plans to mount a coup, to kill Caesar, and to take control of the empire. Caesar even came up with that “Et tu” line himself.

Then Caesar planned to hide out for a while, to let the news of his murder spread throughout Rome. And just when everyone would think his death to be true, he would return to the palace, barging through the doors, claiming that he had returned from the grave to exact revenge upon his murderers. Brutus would be swept out of office, Caesar would be back in charge, and everyone would be terrified of the emperor’s seemingly incredible death-defying powers. His reign would continue, unrivaled, for the rest of his life.

But leave it to Brutus to screw up even the most foolproof of plans. When Caesar told Brutus to invite over a group of his drinking buddies, he hadn’t counted on the fact that Brutus had recently befriended a group of Visigoths hoping to exploit Caesar’s friendship with Brutus to sneak into the palace and kill them both. Everyone got drunk, as per the plan, and Caesar invited his good friend Brutus for a walk. But the Visigoths followed them both and had no trouble murdering Caesar. And they were about to murder Brutus too, but right before they did, Caesar’s fake memo fell out of his tunic pocket. The Visigoths totally bought the story and, assuming he was a wise, calculating leader, decided to let Brutus join their team.

But Brutus was still blackout drunk and wasn’t in a position to be confirming or denying anything. When they all got back to the palace, Brutus went to go get some more wine, but in his stupor, he accidentally poured everybody a drink from a pitcher of poison. (Where he found a pitcher of poison nobody knows for sure. It’s been a subject of debate amongst historians for generations.) Everybody died, except for Brutus, because he passed out for good conveniently just before he was able to take his first sip. When he woke up the next day, he was surrounded by this whole group of slain enemies, one of them clutching Caesar’s made-up story about the coup. The news spread quickly, and suddenly the whole empire developed a new fear and respect for the one-time idiot best friend.

Brutus embraced power and embarked upon planning a campaign of insane public works projects for Rome. His ideas were terrible: liquid chocolate aqueducts; a giant dome to be built around the entire empire, to prevent any aliens from spying; most importantly, feeling constantly guilty for believing that he had killed his best friend, he commissioned the imperial chef to create a new salad in Caesar’s honor. Luckily, none of these plans ever came to see the light of day, except for the salad. The chef overheard Brutus’s musings and created the Cobb salad, because Caesar loved bacon, avocado, and blue cheese dressing. Brutus needed some paper and scissors to make a diorama that he was going to present to the Roman Senate detailing all of his new ideas. But he got way too excited. His mom cried out, “Brutus! You be careful with those scissors! Brutus! Stop running with those scissors! Brutus!” But the power had gone straight to Brutus’s head. He didn’t have to listen to his stupid mom anymore. He was the emperor. But he should have, because he was running way too fast and he tripped on his tunic and landed right on his scissors, which stabbed him directly in the heart. And he died.

Bribery should be OK

I think that professional sports leagues should allow bribery. As much as I try, season after season, I can just never get into sports. Everyone at work always talks about sports. And for some reason, I always think that I’ll just be able to jump in the middle of a conversation and say something that makes it seem like I know what I’m talking about. I’ll read the papers and look for nuggets of insight or something interesting to point out. But I always tell my anecdotes out of context. And besides, it never comes out as genuine, and I think people can pick up on that. Also, if I happen to say something that’s actually relevant to what’s going on, my colleagues will almost always ask me to elaborate, or continue talking to me. In which case I just keep saying, “What?” all while slowly backing away until they’re out of earshot and I really can’t hear them anymore. Bribery would add a whole new level to the game, and would make everything much more interesting, not only for me, but for everyone who insists on talking about sports with me.

I have a constitutional argument for bribery. Aren’t the paying of and/or soliciting of bribes just an extension of our first amendment rights to free speech? I’m going to look it up. OK, I just looked it up and it turns out I’m right (big surprise, right?) Who the hell gets to decide how I can or can’t use my money to influence a game that I’m only marginally a part of? So let’s get on this Justice Department.

Bribery, on the surface, only seems unfair because it’s not out in the open. There are a few ways we could fix this. Bribery could be done all under the watchful gaze of the public eye. So if I go to a sports team and pay a bribe for them to throw the game, everyone would know about it. You might think that this would just end the game, and thus the fun, right there. But you’d be wrong. It would basically be an invitation for someone with even more money to bribe the other team to lose also. Now things would be really interesting. If, all of the sudden, you’re watching a professional sports game, and both sides look like they’re purposefully trying to lose, well then you’ll know what’s going on. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what would happen if both teams really tried to lose? Would the losers then be the winners? I think we’d all be the winners.

But, yeah OK, having everything out in the open seems like a little too much freedom. I think that it should be allowed, but those doing the bribing should be permitted a little anonymity, just a little, again, in the interest of keeping the game interesting. Gambling would have to be made legal for this to work. And bets would have to be continuously accepted throughout the course of a game. Say, for example, that I’m watching a game, and one side is just playing terribly. I might have a pretty good idea that the losing team is just botching it on purpose, so I’ll be able to call in a bet. But then the bribers would be able to take a look at the spread in real time, and they could also adjust their bribes accordingly. Now it would be even more interesting, because you could have money on a certain team, but also have money against whoever is making the bribes.

Now that I’m actually thinking about it, like really thinking about it, I don’t think institutionalized bribery would work out. It just seems like we’d be driving everything to the lowest standards possible. Maybe the bribing should be allowed, but just left solely to the officials. And it could all be really hush-hush. If I were a referee or an umpire or a judge or whoever is in charge of calling the shots for whatever sport I might be observing, I would go around and solicit bribes from one team every game. But after a team paid me, I would make sure that this team lost. And afterwards, the players and the coaches would surround me in the parking lot and say, “Hey! We paid you a bribe! And we expected results!” And I would respond to them, “Well, you wanted results, you got it. The result is a life lesson. And the life lesson is: You shouldn’t bribe the ref.” And they would all lower their fists and their bats and sticks and they would look at each other and slowly come to the realization that, it’s true, cheaters never win.

The only problem with this scenario is: what if a team pays me a bribe, and I want to teach them a lesson, so I plan to make them lose, but it turns out that they are so much better than the opposing team that there is nothing I can do to sway the outcome? Simple. I’ll let them win, but then I’ll tell everyone that they were cheating, that they were using rigged equipment. And I’ll produce baseball bats filled with metal and duffel bags filled with steroids. And I’ll have somebody punch me in the face and I’ll point to my black eye and tell everyone, “See? They’ve been threatening me the whole game. I tried to stand up for the integrity of sportsmanship, but they punched me in the face!” Also, I’d tell them about the bribe, but I’d say that it was forced upon me, that I never wanted to accept it in the first place. I’d probably be portrayed in the news as a hero, as a regular guy who stood up for what’s right.

I’m totally serious here, I swear

Did you guys know that I correctly predicted that Barack Obama would win the 2008 presidential election? Sure, you might be saying to yourself that it’s not a big deal. Some might even say it was pretty obvious. But I correctly predicted the results in 1998, when I was still in the eighth grade, when Barack Obama was just recently elected to the Illinois State Senate. Looking back on how things unfolded, correctly, exactly how I said they would, I really should have made more of an effort to publicize my premonition. But I didn’t.

I can tell you’re all a little skeptical. Here, I can prove it. I wrote the following in one of my notebooks, in 1998, over thirteen years ago, word for word:

“This is really weird. I just had a dream where it was 2008 and this guy named Barack Obama won the presidency. He beat Senator John McCain. I wonder if my dream was real. Will this really happen? Should I tell somebody? Call a newspaper reporter? Nah, I think I’m just going to sit here and listen to my new Korn CD. These guys are great. Maybe I’ll call up Spin Magazine and predict that Korn is going to be the number one band of my generation.”

You see? I told you so. I can kind of understand your inclination to doubt me. And in case you think I just made up that quote, well then why would I have included the lame-ass Korn reference? That’s because that excerpt is real, embarrassingly dated band reference and all. I await your apologies.

Did you guys know that last night at work, I was standing around bullshitting with some of my coworkers, when one of them took four quarters out of his pocket? He held out his arm and bent his elbow up, so his hand was by his ear. He took the four quarters and stacked them on top of his forearm. He then swung his whole arm down in one motion. I flinched, just waiting for one of the quarters to go flying in my face, but after a minute, I opened my eyes and he was just standing there smiling. He had caught all of the quarters. It was amazing and everyone was patting him on the back and telling him how cool of trick that was.

So I got an even better idea. I took all of the cash out my pocket and had them changed into quarters. I gathered everyone around and stacked the coins up on my arm, just like he did. I didn’t even count how much money it was, but the stack had to be like at least three feet high. And that’s a pretty impressive story right there, just the fact that I was able to balance all of those quarters. But it gets better.

I said, “OK boys, everybody ready?” and everyone said to me, “Rob, hold up a second. We’ve all got a bad feeling about this. Just think about what your doing. This is impossible!” and I just shouted, “Now!” and I swung my arm down, just like that other guy. And when I told you that I had flinched the first time, that was nothing compared to how everybody reacted here. One guy curled up into the fetal position on the floor. Talk about overreacting.

Anyway, after a minute, everybody started opening their eyes. One guy crawled out from behind a counter. And I was just standing there, but the quarters were gone. Not only had I caught all of them, but I had somehow cashed them back in for dollar bills. I was just standing there with the bills all spread out in my hand, and I was fanning my face with them, like it was no big deal. Someone started a slow clap, just like on TV, and pretty soon the whole place was just drowned out in applause.

I’m serious! I swear! Look, here’s a text message one of my coworkers sent to me later that night, proving that it happened.

“Holy shit Rob! That trick you did with the quarters … that was unbelievable! I told all of my friends and family members but nobody believes me! Can you come over my house and show my mom? Please? Please? I’ll do anything! Also, thanks for letting me borrow your Preparation H. I can’t believe I forgot mine at home. I owe you one man!”

You see? That just proves it. Because, why would I include such an embarrassing anecdote about hemorrhoid cream if not just to prove to you how true the first part was. I’m serious! Just ask anybody that I work with! I’m not lying!

Please tell me more about how many languages you can speak

I think that probably the best ability any human being could ask for would be the power to understand and speak in any language, fluently. How awesome would that be? And you wouldn’t even need to have ever heard the language before you use it. You’d just listen to two people talking and you would know exactly what they were saying. You could jump in at any point in the conversation and just completely amaze whoever is talking with your grip on their own native tongue. And not only would you speak it competently, but you would be able to speak it better than the two native speakers having the conversation. You’d speak every language better than anybody else. You would be able to interrupt people mid-conversation and correct their grammar. It would be beautiful the way you would speak. It would be the most perfect speaking of a language that anybody has ever heard.

I can just imagine myself standing on the subway next to somebody talking to somebody else in some exotic language from a very faraway land. The language would be a very distant dialect of a very niche Creole spoken only by a few scattered communities throughout some very remote mountains in some place that’s really difficult to find, even if you have a map, a GPS, and five local guides that you’re paying way too much for, but, even though they’re ripping you off, the US dollar is so much stronger than their “currency,” so you can’t even tell that you’re being sold to at a disadvantage. And the two people on the subway are thinking to themselves, we have to be the only people in this city that speak this language. And, actually, they’re not thinking it, they’re saying it out loud. Because they are that sure that nobody has even a slight chance of understanding them, so they never think anything at all. All of their thinking is done by their mouths, because why not? They can say whatever they want.

But I’ll be standing right there, listening to them boast about their total anonymity, their freedom to express themselves and opine and make fun of everyone else without even having to worry about anybody else even making an effort to try and figure out the topic of their conversation. And I’ll just stare at them, right at them. Right at one them, right in the eyes. And I’ll hold my gaze until it gets really uncomfortable for everyone standing around us. The two of them will have stopped talking to each other, and the person’s friend might say something to me like, in English, “Hey buddy. What’s your problem?”

And I’ll answer back in his native dialect. “Nothing’s the matter. Nothing at all. Just listening to some friendly conversation. By the way, you should watch out for your reflexive pronouns. I’ve noticed you used them incorrectly three times in the past ten sentences.” And I’ll watch as the blood drains from both of their faces, as they stand there in shock. One of them will say, “But … how could you … that’s impossible … I … I,” and he’ll probably just pass out from the insanity of the situation. Because how would I be able to know their language? It wouldn’t make any sense. And I’ll just stand there and smile. And then I’ll just get off at the next stop and walk away. And they’ll probably try to follow me, “Wait!” they’ll shout, “We need to know! Who are you?” But I’ll lose them in the crowd, leaving them to wonder for the rest of their lives, to try to make sense of that random guy on the train that somehow spoke that crazy language better than they did.

That’s what I would do on my first day with this ability. I would have all of these other plans with what to do on my second and third days, but something is going to go horribly wrong, something I hadn’t considered before I had imagined myself acquiring this special talent. I’ll be walking down the street after I get off of the subway, and I’ll hear all of these whispers that, at first, don’t seem to make any sense at all. And the intensity and the volume of this babble will ebb and flow and so I’ll just try and brush it off and tell myself that, hey Rob, you’ve just evolved further than any other human being, just try to take it all in a little bit at a time. And that might calm me down for a second, but the whispering will get louder.

And then I’ll realize where it’s coming from. Every time I pass an ATM the noise gets stronger. Every time I’m standing too close to somebody’s cell phone or computer, I’ll pick it up loud and clear. And I’ll have realized all too late that when I had been granted the ability to understand any language, I’ll have forgotten that computer codes and binary and trinary codes consist of their own unique sets of languages. And it will be overwhelming. I’ll have a panic attack and I’ll feel like I’m actually going to die right there on the street so I’ll try to yell out for help, but it’s all going to come out like, “000111101011101101010010010010010010010!” and everyone will stop and look at my like I’m a lunatic. A group of people might form around me, asking me if I need help, thinking that I’m having a stroke or a seizure or an acute crazy episode but the group will be too diverse in origin, and I’ll be responding to a Chinese guy in Swedish and to a Lithuanian guy in Klingon and when the cops finally come and try to make sense of the situation, I’ll start babbling at them in HTML5, which, they’ll mistake as some sort of a terrorist message, and I’ll be arrested and locked up and held indefinitely without ever even being charged. And I’ll be in solitary somewhere, which, after the nonsense I will have went through on the street, will at first seem like a welcome moment of peace. But then I’ll hear it, faintly at first, but ever present as usual. And I’ll realize that the roaches in the corner of the cell are talking incessantly, not about anything intelligent, nothing I could make a decent conversation out of, but about crumbs of food and drops of water and shadows that they can hide behind. And they’ll just talk and talk and talk and they won’t shut up. And the lock that they use to keep me behind bars is computer controlled, and it keeps saying out loud, “system: locked; system: locked,” without pause.

And I’ll sit there and cry and pull the hair at the sides of my head and …

You know what? This doesn’t really sound like such a good ability after all. Except for the part in the subway. That would have been cool. But worth all of the resulting torment? I don’t think so.

And the Oscar goes to …

I’m not sure how, but I’ve always imagined that, at some point in the future, the Academy is eventually going to nominate and award me with the Oscar for Best Director. I know, I know, there’s a lot I have to do to get from where I am right now to being a huge filmmaker, but once I get there, I’ll already have this done, my acceptance speech. I’ve been working on it for some time now:

Thank you, thank you all! I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank everyone that’s helped me get to where I am right now. But first, I’d like to make a very special shout out to my old friend Steve. Oh, my good pal Steve. It’s been a long time buddy. Way too long. Steve and I both started out together as lowly production assistants for some reality show years ago. We got along together well enough at first, but after a few days on set, I saw this nasty, dark side of his personality. Every day Steve and I had to take turns getting lunch for the whole crew. One day as he was passing out the sandwiches, I saw one of the assistant directors grab my sandwich. And Steve didn’t say anything. He just stood there, like a coward. After everybody took their meals, I looked in the now mostly empty bag and saw one pathetic looking sandwich lying at the bottom, completely flattened from the pressure of all of the other sandwiches. It had the words “egg salad” written in marker on the wax paper wrapper.

I said, “Hey Steve, what the hell? You gave away my sandwich?” and he was all like, “Look man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t want anyone to get pissed off, I …” and I cut him off right there and I said, “Well you know what Steve? You did piss somebody off. You pissed me off. Big time.” I made it through the rest of the season without so much as speaking another word to Steve, and I made a promise to myself that day. I told myself that, if I ever made it, if I ever got to be a big director, which I am now, I’d make sure that Steve wouldn’t have even so much as an opportunity to clean the toilets at a public access station in Akron, Ohio. You hear that Steve? I hope you’re watching this. You’re done! You’ll never work in this town again! I always wanted to say that.

Oh, and Steve, I bought you fifty egg salad sandwiches. I bought them last week. I put them all in a big box and had them shipped to your house. And it wasn’t express mail either. I wanted them on the slowest possible route to your house, like five-day regular parcel mail. So now you know what that smell is. I’ll tell you what, Steve, if you can somehow eat all of those egg salad sandwiches in one sitting, if you can do that and somehow prove it to me that you did it, I’ll let go of the grudge. I’ll let bygones be bygones. Are you doing it right now Steve? Have you taken your first bite?

Well forget it. I already changed my mind. I don’t care how much bad egg salad you eat. You could eat nothing but jars of spoiled mayonnaise for the rest of your life, and it still wouldn’t change the fact that your career in show business is over. Hey Steve, I heard you got married a few years ago. Congratulations. I’d also like to take this opportunity in the spotlight to personally ask your wife out on a date. Hey Steve’s wife. If you’re watching this, give me a call. Call me tomorrow. Tell you what, if you leave Steve, I’ll make your wildest dreams come true. I’ll cast you as the lead in my next film. I promise. And I just won best director, so you can be assured that even if it sucks, a ton of people are going to see it, and you’ll make a boat-load of money. What do you say?

But you guys have a kid, right? Sorry babe, the kid’s half Steve, so the kid’s got to go. And you can’t leave him with Steve, either. You have to put him up for adoption first, make sure that Steve will never get to see the kid again. Tell social services that Steve beats the kid up or something. Tell them that Steve’s addicted to meth. Go buy some meth and plant it in Steve’s dresser. Then call social services. Make sure that, when you drop off the kid at the adoption agency, that you tell the social workers that the kid is all fucked up in the head, that he tortures animals in the backyard. You hear that Steve? You’re kid’s going to grow up in a foster home without parents! I’m going to make sure that your kid’s eating nothing but egg salad sandwiches, alone in some government run house for degenerate brats for the rest of his life!

Steve, I’m trying to put myself in your shoes right now, trying to imagine what you must be going through and, you know, I can only think of one way out of your situation. I’m not going to say it on TV, because I don’t want to get in any trouble here but, you know what I’m talking about. What’s it going to be Steve? Huh?

I’d also like to thank the Academy! I’d like to thank my loving family; I couldn’t have done it without your support! And I’d like to thank God! Thank you Jesus for all of the blessings in my life! Good night everybody!