Sunday, April 09, 2006

Skyrocket Your Puppets With Realism

The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889, but who cares? I was built in 1972, which is even less important. Either way, both the Eiffel Tower and I are here right now, baby! So you had better reconcile your view of reality with our presence. You need to re-con-cile! I hear children playing outside my window, and a neighbor is laughing. How compelled I feel to emerge from my flat, approach those fuckers, and force them to reconcile. Two times!

What's really been on my mind lately is, "How do I 'skyrocket my puppets with realism?'" This may read like nonsense, which it is. But it doesn't change the fact that I have been asking myself this question off and on for nearly a week. It all begins and ends, like everything else, with television.

About a week ago, I found myself completely unable to sleep. I tried taking 5mg of lorazepam, which is a lot for me, but my mind was still racing. My bedroom has a television, or more accurately, my television has a bedroom. So between 2am and 5am, I flicked from station to station. Who knows what I watched, but I'm sure that each movie and program I watched represented the very best that artists today have to offer. J'accuse!

Eventually, I started to fall asleep, and I made a terrible mistake; I forgot to shut the television off. The volume was low, but I could make out what people were yelling. If it's worth hearing, it's worth being yelled. Hasn't Fox taught you anything? So I drifted away into the gloaming of near-sleep. It was in that suggestive state that I loudly and repeatedly heard someone on the television scream, "Skyrocket your puppets with realism!"

It didn't wake me up, which is the source of the problem. The problem being my having to question what the hell that meant all week long. It kept popping up. I was reading an article about Karma in "The Smithsonian" magazine when suddenly I asked, "How do I 'skyrocket my puppets?'" It happened when I was grouting the tub, feeding my cat "Toulouse," and trying to put my socks on (long story). And, of course, I couldn't help but meditate over the question in bed every night.

This morning, however, I finally reached the end of my journey. What joy! Whilst sitting at my computer in the wee hours, I head someone on television yell something about skyrocketing something. I looked, and written across the screen were the words:

SKYROCKET YOUR PROFITS WITH REAL ESTATE

Absolute magic. I laughed. I cried. I became part of the "info-mercial." I like to think that I learned a lesson about leaving the television on when trying to sleep. But had I not done that, I never would have traveled on this voyage of self-discovery. Perhaps we are all here to answer the question, "How do I skyrocket my puppets with realism?"

Having thought about it for a week, I have my answer. It will go with me to the grave.