An Explanation and Mini-Post

Family, Friends, Criminals that I've contracted to kill my family and friends:

You've probably noticed that I haven't posted for almost a month, and I think it's safe for me to assume that you've been dying to know about the adversity I've been conquering, the life lessons I've been withholding, or the supermodels I've been sleeping with, etc. But before I get into that, I need to explain where I've been.

So I've spent the majority of the last month playing Sid Meier's Civilization IV. And it's with deep reservations that I reveal this. I couldn't decide if this was one of those secrets that I should keep to myself because it's so shameful, or if it was one of the harmless concessions prideful people should make so that we can live in a more peaceful world. I'm still not sure where this lays, but needless to say, playing this game isn't something I'm proud of.

See, I've been playing this this nerd fest of a game series off and on for the last 11 years. The crescendo of ridiculousness was in 2000 with Civ II, when I spent a few months ignoring the girlfriend, showers and academic obligations in order to bring the Babylonians the glory history denied them. And after an emperor level victory of total domination, after amassing what must be the greatest score in the history of Civilization II, I realized the emptiness that comes from fulfilling one's loserish ambitions. So I swore off the Civilization series for the last 9 years. I was successful in concentrating on more noble pursuits, like drinking too much and watching endless hours of television. But on a recent trip to San Fransisco with Nix and Hari, a trip fraught with rain that kept us indoors, I turned to our host Inder's videogames for entertainment. He just happened to have Civilization and the rest, as they say, is a history of me returning home to buy the video game for myself and repeating some terrible life decisions.

But it's not like I didn't have ideas for posts in the last month. It's just that I never fully fleshed them out since they got in the way of building settlers, vanquishing my enemies and building extensive trade networks that allowed for the development of technologies at a faster rate. But since I've sworn off this silly game yet again, here's that idea:



Weekend at Bernies 3

Most of you already know that I spent the two years between college and law school trying to write a book. I called it The Great American Novel and couldn't any agent to represent it, any publisher to buy it, or any friend or family member to read it. So I gave up on the writing and instead focused on the exciting and rewarding career of being a lawyer. Sigh. But since graduating last May I've had nothing but time on my hands while I wait for this job with the Army to start. So my life has become an exercise in killing days. And I spent 3 months last fall writing short stories and outlining the next book, The Great American Novel II- Even Greater and More American, in order to get through the days without losing my mind while the rest of the world went to work. Well, the last of the rejections of that short fiction just got back to me. So that's it. No more. I've given up on putting effort into writing stuff just to have it rejected by "professionals" who have been "trained" to recognize "work" that has "artistic" merit.

But even though I'm not submitting my stories to professionals, I still have ideas that fill my head and too much time on my hands. And so I feel the need to share these ideas with the 6 of you readers. And if any of you 6 reads the comments sections, you probably noticed that the Onion basically stole from this blog when it published this story. So I'm starting to think that one of you out there has some connections in the biz, and that if I keep putting ideas on here then you'll keep stealing them and they'll keep getting published somehow. So my new business plan is to continue putting these posts on here, allow you to steal from me, and then I'll sue you and the companies that paid you.

So what's the idea that will guarantee my financial security and finally put my legal education to work? It's a movie. A fake documentary that goes behind the scenes of the filming of the big Hollywood production of the same name (Weekend at Bernie's 3 for those of you who don't understand the purpose of titles or context clues). I haven't worked out the details of the plot for the movie within the movie. I'll let the thief among you worry about why Bernie's rotted corpse is being dug up again.

But the real action is the documentary part. Of course we'll need to secure Jonathon Silverman and Andrew McCarthy to star in this thing. But I have a feeling that neither of them has any pressing engagements. There should be a scene or two with with them talking about how exciting it is to be back in Hollywood, and you can just see this excitement in their gestures and hear it in their voices. But their faces should betray an anxiousness, a nervousness that this movie will bomb just like Weekend at Bernie's 2 did and that they will have to go back to their lives of serving dinners or washing cars instead of living the good life. I think both of them have the talent to pull of the subtle anxiousness that is needed to make this aspect of the movie believable, since I felt that these men have always had some talent. But if it turns out they've lost a step or two, then the best bet is not to tell them that the documentary is actually the real film. Pretend it's some promotional thing and they'll probably be unable to hide their real fears.

But the most important part to this movie is Bernie, who isn't interviewed until about half-way through the documentary, and it turns out that he's really dead. So when he's giving the interviews he's a rotted corpse, with flesh coming off the bone and worms eating out of his stomach and all of that. But he's surprisingly articulate and has a great perspective. He'll talk about how, on the one hand, it sucks to have his corpse continually disturbed but, on the other, he understands that a man has to eat. And this whole thing is a metacommentary on the ability of the business side of Hollywood to suck the life out of anything with any artistic merit and how they'll sequel any piece of shit that's surprisingly profitable, even when the story arc to the first movie makes it impossible to credibly tell another story, but that's not important because what's important in this world is to accumulate cash so that you have a higher purchasing power than your brethren so that you can buy nicer things and go to nicer vacation spots and eat nicer food because those ends are what life is really about because it in no way makes you feel empty inside like the way a total domination victory on the emperor level with the Babylonians makes you feel empty inside, because that's a different kind of empty.