03.07.2002 - Silently Judging You

Dig this week's column. I have one more before the quarter's over. I need a good topic. Let me know if you think of anything decent and I might give you a shout out and/or nudie pictures, possibly of myself.

Painful food and painful realizations

Holy Sweet Aunt Jemima, I think I've finally lost it.

I feel like a shell of my former self. I've lost the desire to do the one thing I enjoyed most, and quite possibly the only thing for which I've ever shown true talent. For some reason, I no longer have the will to make fun of people, and it's scaring the Sean "P. Diddy" Combs out of me.

I realized I had a problem while enjoying a fine meal with some friends at the local Hometown Buffet, also known as The Mullet Capital of Sacramento. Normally chowing down in Yokelville would give me enough jokes to make my head explode, but for some reason, the mass of jackals shoveling Spinach Marie down their gullets didn’t inspire me at all. Driving home, I contemplated whether the sick feeling in my stomach was due to the questionable filet o’ fish I choked down or unease from the realization that I’m changing.

Usually making fun of people at a place like Hometown Buffet would have been easier than a slutty seventeen year old on prom night, and probably would have given me the same kind of pleasure. It’s been my favorite pastime for as long as I can recall. I remember getting positively giddy when I made my then bully of an older brother cry because I made his friends laugh at his eight-year-old heaving man boobies. It’s cruel, I know, but when I found out he bit the head off of my Optimus Prime action figure, I felt I had to retaliate.

The problem is that events like that set me up for several years of habitually taking cheap shots at people either to make myself feel better or to make others feel worse. Appallingly, it has taken me twenty-one years to realize this behavior is about as cool and fashionable as a fuscia vinyl jacket airbrushed with pictures of the original members of Menudo.

As I scanned the restaurant on Sunday night, I saw a man with several missing teeth trying to enjoy a corn cob, a woman with a large dollop of tapioca pudding on her too-tight Jazzercise T-shirt and a young boy with glasses thick enough to flash fry a puppy if held up to the sun. Normally, I would have seen these people as easy targets, but instead, I saw myself. I have been or could in the future be every one of them. Since I’d probably have a nervous breakdown if I knew wherever I went some buttface would mock me just to make his friends chuckle, I started feeling remorse for my actions.

My nightmares have come true-- I’ve somehow developed a conscience. What’s worse, I’ve discovered that deep down I actually like people. What is this world coming to?

Although I’ve developed a better appreciation for the feelings of others, I still have an enormous black hole of negative energy sitting dormant in the recesses of my brain. It has to go somewhere. I already have a significant portion of that energy invested in self-loathing, so that isn’t such a viable solution. Since the little people that frolic around inside the box in my living room aren't real for all I know, entertainers and celebrities are still a satisfactory outlet for my vitriol.

Famous people could be robots for all I know, and it's healthier for me to believe that they are. So I casually mention Russell Crowe is a grating troglodyte who proved that all it takes to win an Oscar is to prance around in a loin cloth while donning the facial expression of someone painfully trying to drop a deuce. Cro-bot 3000 doesn't care. Cro-bot 3000 doesn't have feelings. So long as Cro-bot 3000 doesn't assault me like he did the producer of the BAFTA awards when he cut Cro-bot 3000's poem from the telecast, I'm set.

Until the day comes that I'm free of all this negative energy, you can find me hunched in front of the TV hurling indignities at anyone too famous for me to ever meet in real life. That should keep me from making fun of people I see on the street.

So if I happen to call you a crotch goblin in the future, know I meant it in the best way possible.