On Absurdity

So I've heard that when they made Rocky III that the film company made this huge bronze statue of Stallone as Rocky Balboa. They didn't make some kind of fucking plaster cast and paint it. They made a solid bronze heavy-as-fuck statue, and when they were done filming they just left the damn thing in Philly. It's still fucking there, can you believe that?

I think about that a lot. I went to the world's biggest skillet, I met a man who wore the most t-shirts at one time, and I've seen a house-- a couple's fucking house-- that was built as a giant cat toy.

The thing that I've realized in all my travels is that people are goddamn ridiculous. I mean, one could argue that it's some kind of art. I mean, there was that Colossus in Rhodes. There's something to be said for creating something that's a big "fuck you" to everyone else, but let's face it, is there anyone alive that's jealous of the world's biggest skillet? Could anyone be anything other than mildly amused? I swear, it's the most bizarre form of cultural masturbation that's ever been created.

My folks used to take me to all these damnable things on these big endless road trips to nowhere. I suppose you could say that's how this all really started. We'd go cross-country and we'd stop at every single one of these fucking items and it was summer in the great plains and a billion degrees outside and the station wagon would overheat so we had to blast the heat instead of the AC and I'd sweat for two thousand miles straight.

I've moved on, but some memories last a lifetime. Last year I was driving out to LA when my car broke down somewhere in Kansas. The heat radiated off the asphalt and I thought about all that wasted time and the fucking station wagon and the big fucking skillet and I just lost it. I walked fifty miles to the world's biggest ball of twine and at 3:00AM I set the fucking thing ablaze. I watched the thing turn to ash and I literally felt the ghosts of wasted hours released like a thousand souls from hell escaping the lake of fire. Next I took an arc welder to that goddamn frying pan. I took a hammer to the world's largest thermometer. You know they had a foam replica of Stonehenge in Virginia? It took me all night to hack that down with a machete.

Actually, there's also the world's heaviest ball of twine, largest built by one person, largest built by a community. Well, there were. Fucking twine!

So then I find out about this latest one. They've got it in some airplane hangar and there's engineers working around the clock on it. Fucking engineers! People who spent years in college learning math that would make our heads explode, and they're using it for shit like this! They have National Guard on patrol around the hangar. There's millions invested into this project. The funny thing is, though, try as I might, I couldn't think of a way to destroy it, so late at night I dressed up all in black, cut the fence, evaded the guards and entered the hangar. Fucking thing was massive. I saw my reflection in it, distorted by its curvature, or maybe I was looking at my soul, distorted by my past torment, or my destruction of childhood memories or any other of the myriad of possibilities in regards to my recent vendetta. I was past the point of no return, though, and began cutting through the support beams. As it tore its way out of the hangar anarchy overtook the place and I went out the same way I came in, totally satisfied that I had marred the greatest yet of all these spectacles.

You're giving me a look like you're wondering why I'm telling you all of this. At first, well, at first I didn't think you'd understand, or that you'd try to stop me from going this time or have me committed. I believed that when I left last week, but now I'm hoping I was wrong. Darling, I love you. You've made me about as happy as I've ever been in my life and it's only getting better, and I want you to know I'm done. I knocked loose the world's largest ball-bearing and watched it roll into a lake. It was the largest, most useless thing in the history of mankind, and I sent it to the bottom of a lake, and now the world's biggest sandwich or pancake or whatever isn't going to make a bit of difference to me. I'm cured, don't you see?

Please, please don't leave me.