Rick, Neil, Viv, Mike, and spam

[garote]

Corresponding with Bradley:

Often I feel that the reason I'm insane is that I'm excessively sane. There's too much dead air in daily life for really sane people to enjoy it. You dig?

So I try to liven it up. I've had conversations with imaginary 'people' in my mind, watched objects that weren't really there... Most of the time I don't bother to personify my internal dialogue beyond the raw emotion behind the words, but sometimes distinct voices emerge. The most 'people' with distinct views and emotional states I've had conversing together in my head is four. All of them are me - if I didn't think that I'd be a schizophrenic and need medication - but they are definitely distinct.

Here's a reconstructed version of the kind of argument four people can get into in my head. The names I've assigned are arbitrary.

Rick: Spam rolls down hill.
Neil: No it doesn’t!
Rick: Yes it does.
Neil: If it rolled down hill it would leave stretchmarks.
Rick: Spam doesn’t leave stretchmarks on vinyl.
Neil: So? When’s the last time you’ve seen a hill made of vinyl?
Rick: I have one out in back of my house! It has little vinyl flowers stuck all over it!
Neil: Well have you tried rolling spam down it?
Rick: No, but nothing else leaves stretchmarks, so spam shouldn't leave stretchmarks either.
Neil: Look, it’s a moot point, because as I said, spam doesn’t roll down hill!
Rick: Of course it does!
Neil: Then why doesn’t your hill have stretchmarks on it?
Rick: Hey, why would I even roll spam down my hill?
Neil: You haven't? Then how do you know it's possible?
Rick: Everything I've ever heard and seen indicates that spam rolls down hill!
Neil: But you haven't actually done the experiment? Ha; you suck!
Rick: Don't give me that formal scientific proof crap!
Neil: Your evidence is circumstantial. Occam's razor. Spam doesn't roll down hill until you can show it does.
Rick: That's crap. You're just saying that because you can't prove a negative!
Neil: You haven't seen it; I haven't seen it. It doesn't roll down hill.
Rick: YES IT DOES!
Neil: NO IT DOESN'T!!
Viv: HEY!! Will the two of you just SHUT UP?!
Rick and Neil: What’s it to you?!
Viv: Spam is a damn stupid thing to argue about! Argue about something else!
Rick: All I’m trying to say is, it rolls down hill!
Neil: That’s BULLSHIT! It doesn’t!
Viv: WHO CARES?! It doesn’t matter either way; it’s stupid!!
Rick: YOU'RE stupid! It matters to me!
Viv: Well it doesn’t matter to me, and I don’t want to hear any arguing over it, it’s really aggravating!
Mike: (to Viv) Hey, why do you have a problem with it? Let them argue!
Rick: Yeah!
Viv: Come on; why do they have to argue about spam? Why are they arguing at all? Let's agree about something instead, or talk about what a nice day it was.
Neil: Ha Ha.
Mike: If they want to argue about spam, let them argue!
Viv: But it's so unimportant!
Rick: Not to me!
Mike: (to Viv) Importance is a relative thing. I don't see why they should stop arguing just because you don't like it.
Viv: I don't want to hear about spam.
Mike: Until you can come up with a better justification for stopping them, it makes more sense to continue.
Viv: What's it to you?
Mike: I'm just trying to keep things fair. Your objection is wholly arbitrary.
Rick: (to Viv) Yeah!
Viv: GRRRRRRRGH.
Mike: (to Rick and Niel) As far as I'm concerned, you two can continue.
Rick: Oh; thanks mister police officer arbitrator man. Whatever. Pffft. So where were we?
Neil: Umm.... I just said that you have no way of knowing it rolls down hill.
Rick: And I said that was metaphysical baloney. And what was that whole bit about stretchmarks? I've never heard of anything leaving stretchmarks from rolling down anything!
Neil: If you can say spam rolls down hill, you can at least believe me when I say it would leave stretchmarks.
Rick: I'll believe no such thing. It's perfectly natural for spam to roll down hill. Stretchmarks ... now that would be silly.
Neil: It is not natural! Not even a little!
Rick: Oh now GRAVITY isn't natural?
Neil: Hills made out of vinyl, THAT'S not natural.
Rick: Oh that's it. We're gonna prove this, mister natural formal science proof bastard. We are gonna get some spam and go to my house and I'll show you, NOT ONLY is it gonna roll down that hill, you'll see zero freaking stretchmarks on it afterwards.
Neil: Will too!
Rick: WILL NOT!
Neil: WILL TOO!
Viv: AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!
Rick and Niel (to Viv): SHUT UP!!
Viv: YOU SHUT UP!
Mike: I told you before, there's no reason for them to stop!
Viv: Look, if we're going to argue, let's just argue about something else.
Neil: Yeah well, I didn't want to argue about spam anyway. Spam is dumb.
Rick: Oh you all suck! All of you!!
Mike: What would you have us argue about instead?
Viv: Let me think for a minute.
Rick: Clock's ticking! Hah, all that calling for quiet and you don't have anything to contribute.
Viv: Well, we could always talk about girls!
Neil: Oh, COME ON! That's actually WORSE than spam!! If we get started on girls, we'll NEVER stop arguing!
Rick: Well I have no problem with it. Fine subject.
Neil: Jackass! Man, I'd actually rather argue about spam!
Rick: There is no argument. Spam rolls down hill. Accept it.
Neil: No way!!
Mike: Hey, we can only properly discuss one thing at a time. And he (referring to Viv) did tolerate your spam argument for a while. No single subject is EVER going to satisfy all of us at once.
Rick: Huhuh, that's what she said!
Niel: Oh, this is going to go so well.
Mike: (to Viv) Well? You have the floor.
Viv: Uh, let's see...
(several moments of silence)
Viv: ...I need a date.
Rick: Right on, bruthah.
Niel: That's it; I'm going outside...

After a life full of MATERIAL SHIT, canned events, accidents, and different LOCATIONS, what really matters? Who are the controllers? The politicians? Religious 'leaders'? The president? The band members? The drug dealers? Or is it the 'system' that somehow has control over EVERYONE?

Everything is built on everything else, including things that suck. Including pop culture that you or I find repellant. A commercial for Bambi on tv is not depriving the person of a choice, it is informing them of one. Or is it some kind of weapon like a spear, that gouges the viewers' eyeballs out and they are helpless to resist, and they walk like a zombie to the nearest theatre?

Culture is what happens when you're bored. But the solutions for boredom are infinite. So everyone wants all culture to reflect what THEY are interested in. It's terrible, and yet somehow hilarious how people forget to acknowledge their subjectivity. If you infiltrated a bigwig company and changed their product line from videos of Bambi to videos of Bladerunner, would you claim it was in the interest of 'saving' the masses from vapid, inane culture? What if, after you made the change, nobody bought a single video, and instead wondered where the hell Bambi went? You can lead a horse to water... This is also close to the reasoning people apply when they ban things like toy guns, bloody video games, pornography, racist manifestos, The Anarchist Cookbook, etc...

A reactionary dislike of a dumb thing that many other people like is nonetheless reactionary. We all want to claim we dislike it because it's dumb, and therefore we're not being reactionary. But, if we truly weren't reacting, would we still notice - or care - what other people like? It's an inescapable corruption, and we're wallowing in it, all day long, every time we invoke the very idea of "many other people". We're being typical young people and trying to define ourselves, and find terrain upon which we have an advantage, so we can leverage that. That means moving away from common ground. And that means spending a lot of time trying to decide what is common. And if we think too much about that... Uh oh. It's a delusion. NOW what do we do?