The Daily Fix

The problem with child labor is that it’s in all the poverty-stricken places, and isn’t getting imported into the prosperous nations it ought to exist in. For example, I need (desperately) an eight-year-old butler to cater to my every whim. “Roberto, commence the fanning!” I would cry, and hence Roberto would come toddling forwards from his cleverly hidden quarters (also known as the “dryer”), carrying with him an immense palm frond. This palm frond would be utilized in the most ingenious of ways, as an air-circulation device. Who needs strength of character when an eight-year old Puerto Rican boy is hand-feeding you grapes, I ask? Nobody, that is who. Not even the Dalai Llama could resist Roberto’s charms, I feel.

But enough about my upbringing! Or, perhaps not. It is important to realize that it is not in my, Roberto the writer’s tiny scarred hands that the power rests in. Rather, it is John Moses Tarkington that holds the power over me. I am frenzied, hurried, driven mad by the delusive power of my literary glory! Or not. I believe John Moses Tarkington and I tire easily, and require sustenance. To the ink bar!

I’d like to think that the fourth wall is broken every time a piece of art is created. After all, all art is created with the intent of viewing, and so the art communicates (intently) with the viewer, on a visual, aural, or perhaps literal level. Hitherto, this work shall be referred to as “John Moses Tarkington.” Say hello to John Moses Tarkington, will you? Did you know that John Moses Tarkington’s Flesch-Kinkaid reading level is at eleventh grade? A high-school junior probably wouldn’t agree with this; they are so full of vitality and youth (and therefore mistaken thoughts that they are here for a reason) that they couldn’t ever ever ever ever ever love John Moses Tarkington. Of course, he’s not meant to be loved- OH GOD A PRONOUN.

This particularly infantile practice of quickly ending a sentence by segueing into another, totally irrelevant one seems to be a large, hairy dinosaur. Dinosaurs existed mainly for the edification of Rhodes scholars, like Kris Kristofferson, certified member of the board of Members, Canada ’s largest organization of male organ donors. They’ll “donate” their organs to you any time! It’s just that they’ll put them back in their trousers when their done (as if you didn’t get the high-laaariously amusing joke already, I have hidden inside this infant paragraph the gift of obvious secondary lines that add no value to my already invaluable humor).

So, there’s gun control. A lovely issue full of gravity, levity, and other “-vity”s. Such as depravity! Language is much more fun when it is a dull scalpel, applied liberally to any surface presented in large doses. (I can only think of how this metaphor would be literally applied; a mad surgeon running amok in a hospital with a shaving-razor). In contrast, specific language is as boring and full of drudgery as linguistic skill in useless application is sparkling, entertaining, and full of wit (mirth and wisdom notwithstanding!). Who can deny the pure glee of a sheet of snowy white to scribble over, with no intent or purpose but the defiling of whiteness and the destruction of the peaceful gurgling of the void. Once noise and chaotic letters reign eternal, it can be lauded as “art” and an “achievement,” according to its respective significance and accidental poignancy. On the other hand, applied literature: Christly as this mission may be, there is nothing as frightfully horrorsome as the creation of a purposed, thoughtful essay. Not only might this behemoth of a time-waster take twice the effort, thrice the time utilized, and at least a (metric) ton of thought, but turtles are indeed green, and shall remain so.

Yes, the aquatic creature once again saves us from the looming threat of this piece of writing’s sense of purpose and sensibility, two mortal (mortal!) sins, which can only be avoided by an unnecessary amount of complacency (but if every amount of everything is unnecessary, then why not use it all?). And why shouldn’t the writer be complacent? Here He is, reigning over his eternal kingdom, secure in the fact that his intellectual property shall remain forever His. This is a faulty assumption, of course, for all supposedly original thought is plagiaristic truthiness; denial of the fact that in the course of human history, there have been exactly trillions (if not more) of human beings, making it statistically highly unlikely that you are thinking of anything that has not been preconceived and presented to you in some form or another. This previous thought has been successfully used many times. Just like writing inanities is an applicable solution to a problem.

In beginning, I would like to take the opportunity presented by this blank (also known as devoid) page to say a few words to you, my comrades of nothing. Nihilism has previously been dismissed as parrot talking, or peg-legged sensibility, a piratical dictionary of the absurd and unkind. This short-changes the noble art of Nonnumism, the practice and application of intellectual will and might towards nothingness. This is not to say surrender, for a saber surrendered is a saber lost, and one must retain one’s weapons until finally one is run through by any pointy objects they themselves have acquired. “Live by the musket, die by old age,” the inventor of the musket used to say (before he was shot with a musket). It is simply the advocacy that nihilism must be applied to life in order to appreciate and understand it; that once nothing really has tangible purpose or meaning it is honestly freed from any type of chains and given wonderful wings with which it might fly confusedly in any of a billion directions at once.

Take gun control, for example. This paragraph is going to be about gun control. Remember that fellow with the musket? How ironic, then, that he was shot with the ply of his own trade, the foul dog run through by the sharp-edged objet d’art that he himself had helped to create: fear not gun owners, this irony shall not apply to thee! Rather, it won’t if we adopt my measures to prevent gun control. It is quite simple, really: it is said that you are highly more probable to die in a gun-related accident if there are guns involved (do not argue with me; I am certain that this may be a fact in certain countries, perhaps not this one but Zimbabwe maybe). This is infallible logic! However, if you shoot a man with a gun, there is one less gun owner to shoot other gun owners with guns (further infallible logic)! So, then, shooting gun owners with guns may appear (deceptively) to lower gun crimes, but in the long run, once they are all dead and you stand victoriously atop a gigantic mound made of smoking muzzles and human bodies (or at least parts of therein), it will have worked out admirably! However, there must be preventative measures taken as well, to most assuredly deprive potential gun criminals of their cruel steel. The scheduled death of any human being that approaches your hill of bullet-dispensing justice should do it.