Is it possible to write a story that lacks conflict, heroes, or villains?
Let’s find out
****
My guts were boiling.
I climbed out of bed, dropped my pants, and evacuated my bowels. It was a good shit.
Afterwards, I shaved my balls. And ass. I climbed in the shower and measured my penis: 3.5 inches soft, 5in hard (5 1/4in from the taint).
I shoved some eggs and toast down my throat and grabbed a coffee. As I was walking out to the driveway, my neighbor confronted me.
“If you blast your radio at 2am again, I am calling the cops!” he said.
I pulled out my Glock. “Look buddy,” I replied, “you’re on my property. That means I have the right to unleash holy hell right into your skull. So don’t fuck with me!”
Then I got into my car and turned up the radio. I bounced up and down all the way to work to the sound of ‘Big Fat Funky Booty’ by the Spin Doctors on repeat.
When I arrived, I walked into the office. “Hey baby,” I said to the receptionist, “when are you gonna give me a shot at those titties?”
“I’ve already reported you to Human Resources,” she replied. “Please don’t speak to me.”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch, sweetheart,” I said.
I went to my desk and pulled out a bottle of scotch. “A little early in the morning for that, isn’t it Bill?” my boss asked.
“You know I’m never sober before 8am, Dick,” I replied.
“Damn it Bill! I should fire you but you always do your best work drunk.”
“Thanks Dick. Say, when am I getting that raise?”
“Once when we get those lawsuits settled from all the faulty products you designed, you’ll get a 20% raise.”
“Fuckin snowflakes,” I said. “A little cancer never hurt anyone.”
“I think the judge will agree,” Dick replied. “He should. We paid him enough money.”
“Thanks Dick. You’re the best.”
Dick went back to his office and I pulled up porn on my work computer. It was a productive day.
I’m old and my mind is going. Too much drugs, too much useless information clouds my brain. Which is why a lot of common knowledge straight up misses me.
As you are aware, I’m a nerd for New Testament/Early Christian history. Am I a Christian or a religious person? Not really, but I don’t understand the question enough to give a definitive answer (remember, my mind is going). I simply obsess over 1st Century Christianity because, as Bart Ehrman asserts, it might just be the most important era in Western History (I disagree. I think it’s the second most).
Unfortunately, there’s just not enough concrete information to definitely say what happened during Jesus’s real life ministry. Of course, speculating is part of the fun, but it’s also a curse. Because there’s so many gaps in the timeline, this invites a multitude of con artists and conspiracy mongers to perpetuate fabricated stories.
Which brings me to the “Secret Gospel of Mark”.
The actual Gospel of Mark, the one we have in the New Testament, is quietly the most important text in Western thought. I say this because the Gospels are certainly more widely read than something like Plato’s Republic, and Mark is the Gospel that Matthew and Luke based much of their texts on (the other source they both used, the hypothetical Q source, I would argue the author of Mark was familiar with as there are too many similarities…which would make Q the most important text. But Q remains hypothetical). Mark is therefore the oldest surviving account of Jesus’s life (the oldest surviving Christian writings, however, are the seven verified Epistles of Paul, with 1st Thessalonians being the oldest).
Now, there are A LOT of questions for Mark. Too many to recount here. It is the barest of the four canonical Gospels with plenty of peculiarities.
But what if someone credentialed allegedly came across evidence to fill in these gaps?
Enter Morton Smith, a Ph.D from Hebrew University and Th.D from Harvard Divinity, and professor of ancient history at Columbia University. Pretty impressive right?
I was made aware of this story when reading Ehrman’s Lost Christianities. I’ve never heard it before and I was shocked at my ignorance. Now Ehrman is probably the leading academic in the field of Early Christianity, and even he doesn’t quite know what to make of this story.
Briefly, Smith claimed to have found a lost letter from Clement of Alexandria, an early Christian theologian, which describes a variant of the Gospel of Mark and even provides a couple of passages. And boy oh boy! What passages they were!
The problem is that, allegedly, this lost letter was transcribed in the 18th Century, and Smith couldn’t provide the copy because it was property of a monastery in Jerusalem. He DID, however, provide photographs of the letter and scholars have determined that these writings were indeed in the style of Clement and Mark (and the handwriting was also of 18th Century style).
Additionally, Ehrman recalls a story of hearing another academic claiming to have seen the letter himself, despite the library still refusing to permit research into it. So, it’s safe to say that this letter genuinely existed.
Whether or not it was written in the 18th Century is a different story.
You see, because if there was one person on this planet that could have forged that document…well enough to fool many academics…Morton Smith was that man. And, apparently, he had a motive to do so (see Ehrman’s Lost Christianities).
For the record, I think the letter is a total, unambiguous forgery. Too good to be true+motive+means=bullshit. But I gotta tip my hat to Smith.
Every bullshit artist knows that eventually they’ll get caught in the lie. But the trick is to leave a shred of doubt. And Morton Smith either made the discovery of the millennium, or the greatest forgery of all time.
You know how there were a bunch of mediocre period films from the 80s and 90s?
You know, like Gandhi, Out of Africa, Titanic, Rob Roy, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Man in the Iron Mask, The 13th Warrior, Enemy at the Gates? Etc etc…
Has there ever been a movie that started off vanilla and then did a complete 180?
Like I have an idea of a period piece, during the Napoleonic Wars or Mongol Invasions or some shit, where the typical tropes are established: a virtuous hero, a mustache-twirling villain, a love interest, and a community standing up to the forces of evil, etc. The film will open with some boring quote on the nature of war: “In war, there are no heroes”, or whatever. Even the leading man will be the safest, whitest, most bland actor you can think of…one of the “Chris’s” probably (Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Pine). The entire first half will be nothing but tropes and cliches…even the cinematography and music are flat and unoriginal, to the point where the audience will stop paying attention…as our hero prepares his community for battle against some dumb villain.
Then the second half opens and all fucking hell breaks loose: the “hero” and his army, as one thing leads to another, just commits straight-up genocide in the most offensive and disgusting way possible. And the worst part: the “hero” doesn’t reflect on his dishonorable victory. To him, it’s all glory. The film is told from his perspective as he slaughters men, women, children, and takes slaves for good measure…all told through the lens of bland 90s filmmaking.
Then the lame quote from the beginning… “In war, there are no heroes” …reappears at the end, just so you can show the audience that you tried to warn them. And that’s the moral of the film: everyone is capable of evil so pay attention, we’re all blinded by ideology, blah blah blah
Is anyone else seeing what I’m seeing here?
Sure there are films that deliberately fuck with the audience, but is there one out there that fucks with the audience based on expectation (like making the audience believe they’re watching standard Hollywood fare, but reveal that they’re actually watching torture porn)?
Do people actually read Nietzsche or do they just quote him so that they appear smart?
Look, I love ramblings of insane people as much as the next guy but just because some dude from the past said something doesn’t make it correct.
Same thing with George Orwell. I legit never met anybody who read 1984. They claim that they have, but I know better. The libertarian types love bringing up Orwell, but I guess they forgot that while Orwell’s politics sound, to me, a bit nuanced, he was pretty solidly a leftist.
Maybe I just refuse to believe that anyone from the past has a greater insight into our present than we do today. It just doesn’t make sense. Bring Isaac Newton to the present and I guarantee that you could crush his ass in a game of Trivial Pursuit.
What are some other authors that stupid people claim to read (but actually didn’t)?
(Update: I’m 119 years old and I don’t understand technology. It doesn’t help that I lost the use of my left side brain at the Battle of Verdun. So forget all of this. It never happened. But I’m leaving this up because some of it is funny. I dunno. Then again I’ve been off my anticonvulsant meds the last few days)
So I was watching The Beastmaster when the Tanya Roberts bathing scene came on. I was about to “master” another “beast” if you know what I mean 😉😉😉 (Rip Torn gets me hot), but then I thought “I should create a Facebook page for my website!”
First, I tried setting up a business page, but Facebook forbids that with WordPress sites or some crap (or I have to buy some add-on, but I ain’t paying for that shit) so I set up a group page instead.
Here’s the link:
(not available)
“Why Facebook?” a question you’re probably not asking.
Because it’s the only social media site that doesn’t make me want to hire a hit man to set me on fire.
So come join! If you don’t then you probably have a tiny penis anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying that you’re less of a man if you don’t join my group.
So if you want to regain your self-respect, you better join the Internet Ruined Everything group and meet other weirdos just like YOU.
I’m only saying this because my posts “i ain’t wearin no masks” is currently my most viewed of the month and almost no interaction.
So I feel the need to explain a bad joke.
I just want to say that there’s nothing to worry about, I was just trying to make a post that would offend everyone. No big deal.
I do wear a KN95 mask when I go into public. BUT, it should also be noted that I was doing that BEFORE the pandemic and will continue to do so long after.
I ONLY go into public incognito.
I ALSO got the vaccination. Again, not because of a “pandemic”, but because I will inject my body with anything at least ONCE. In the case of the vaccination, I did it THREE times (the two initial shots PLUS the booster) because it was that damn good.
Like I said, I don’t believe in overwhelming scientific evidence that says that there’s a raging pandemic going around the world. Science is liberal bullshit.
Remember between the end of the Cold War and 9/11 when such overrated classics like The Matrix, Fight Club, and American Beauty reminded us that we are bored with life and need to escape reality?
Then a few planes crashed into some buildings and everyone was like “how horrible!” but were secretly like “oh thank god! Something interesting is happening in the world” because we’re sick and terrible people?
There’s something deep-seated in the human psyche that draws it towards suffering. It’s like we need it to be reminded that we’re still alive.
It’s sick.
We are sick and terrible people and a meteor needs to strike the earth to put us out of our misery.
But until this happens, we have to occupy the time in between. So don’t forget to install those gutters, paint your walls, and plant those gardens….
I sometimes wonder: do people not know when they’re insane?
I mean, obviously if they did know they were crazy, then they wouldn’t be crazy. That makes sense, right?
But has society made insanity somewhat permissible? And has this become apparent to some people but not to others?
I grew up around rich kids. My parents weren’t rich. They liked to think they were but they weren’t. Everyone knew they weren’t rich…at least not as rich as they were…so everyone kinda patted my family on the head and said “nice try, but you’re not in the club”. So I had an unusual upbringing where I was at the bottom of a rather exclusive and rarefied ladder.
I’m not asking for pity, I had it pretty good overall, I’m just saying: I grew up on the outside looking into a party of insane, sociopathic people.
Now all my rich friends are grown up. I don’t talk to any of them, but I CAN Facebook stalk them and what I find is extremely gratifying: many of them have been arrested and/or have drug problems.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in the same situation, but those were youthful transgressions by comparison. I didn’t have a career or family and people just kinda accepted that I was a drunk asshole. But eventually there came a point where I said: “this is not acceptable” (or rather, a judge said that).
But by looking at the Facebook profiles of a bunch of 30 and 40 year olds, that thought hasn’t occurred to any of them. I mean, how many domestic violence arrests do you need? They do know that bail and attorney fees costs money right? The police are “harassing” you? But you’re white and rich!
Like I said, reading this shit is like Christmas to me. Is my life much better? Maybe not monetarily. But at least I’m not in a state of denial about being an asshole and a menace to society. You can have sympathy for them, but these people contributed to my inferiority complex. So until I get an apology, fuck em.
But I guess when you live in that rarified atmosphere, you can double down on your bad decisions. Some smart guy supposedly once said: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And if you’re rich enough, you can afford to do that.
No I’m not bitter about being condescended to by rich people as a child. I have a lucrative job at the toilet factory and run successful blog. Why should I be jealous?
Sometimes to feel better about myself, I’ll peruse the Reddit boards of single guys. Not the MGTOW or incel stuff, but the boards that discuss the general lives of single men.
Just to reiterate, being in a long term relationship is great. Top 10 experience for sure. And it’s alarmingly easy to be in one (if you’re an adult).
So it’s important to note that if you’re not in a romantic relationship and you want to be in one, it’s totally your fault.
So assuming that you’re a normal, functioning adult male, I have some excellent news for you: if you listen to me, you DEFINITELY won’t be a ladies man but you’ll find yourself a romantic partner soon, tomorrow probably.
How can I be so sure?
Well let me introduce you to two men:
Charles Bukowski Slavoj Zizek
The first was an alcoholic writer that found success late in life. The other is a philosopher that eats from a trash can. But these two men could get it (ladies, don’t chime in).
What do you notice about these guys? Would you say they’re ‘good looking’? Are they well kempt? Do they look healthy and in shape? The answer to all three questions is a resounding ‘no’.
So how do (did) they do it?
The answer is easy: they don’t give a shit. But they also share another trait: they possess an ‘edge’.
Is this ‘edge’ confidence? Absolutely not. Bukowski was especially self-loathing and self-deprecating. Zizek, on the other hand, hardly realizes that he’s an actual person that moves through space and time.
Is it because they’re funny? In their own way, yes. But this humor derives from their character. It has nothing to do with them being especially cunning.
Are they ‘dangerous’? Lol! No.
So what is this ‘edge’?
Honestly, that’s difficult to say. Some might say a man has to be a “master of his domain”, but that sounds like nonsense. I imagine it depends on the man. But if I had to guess, I’d say this ‘edge’ has something to do with viewing the world with clarity and lacking pretension. Or, in another way, it’s accepting who you are and not giving a shit.
So if you want to be successful in relationships, or just want to get into one at all, one must “know thyself”.
Another thing is the misplaced emphasis on sex. Part of growing up is realizing that “everything is about sex except for sex.” Most of the time, I wish that I stayed home and watched porn instead.
Also, women piss, shit, fart, burp, and are every bit as disgusting as you and me. They know that WE do those things, but they love us nonetheless. So I don’t see what your problem is dude.
And stop saying your “single”. Just say you’re “not in a long term relationship currently”. Ladies can get away with announcing their singleship. It will always work out in their favor. It won’t for you. That’s just facts.
Just trying to help dude. Hate the game, not the messenger. Or whatever.
The Internet Ruined Everything 