Dad told me this story many years ago. Like most tales he told me, I have no idea if this is true. My own cursory research hasn’t uncovered anything to corroborate his tale. But said research hasn’t definitively proven it to be an urban legend either. The important thing is, it’s a story that I very much want to be real.
The story goes like this.
“Why can’t you go to the movies tomorrow?” she asks.
“Because I have to work,” I say. “Your school has the day off, but my office doesn’t.”
“You have to go and write books?”
“No, that’s not my job.”
She fixes me with a quizzical look. When I lock myself away to write at home, I often tell her I have to work. I now realize this has led her to think writing is what I do for my job-job. For a moment I believe I’ve disappointed her, but really I’ve only disappointed myself.
“I don’t get paid to write,” I explain. “I do it in my free time.”
“You write for fun?”
“It’s not really fun, but…”
“You should make a book of your stories. Like, from your life. They’re funny!”
“What would you put in that book?”
“The Salty Dog story, and, um…I don’t know, but they’re funny. You should tell more people your stories and get paid for that and that would be your job instead.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
A million things spring to mind, a million things that stab and bubble inside my brain all day when I’m away from her, at my “real” job, but I can say none of them. Not to her.
“Well…It’s very hard to make a living as a writer, and people don’t seem too interested in the things I want to…”
“Battery roll!”
“What?”
“Battery roll, that’s another good story you have.”
“Yeah, I like that one, too. I don’t think anybody wants a book about this stuff.”
“Then make something else with it.”
“Like what?”
*shrug*
“Alright, under the covers now. I love you.”
“Say ‘don’t let the bed bugs bite’,” she commands.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” I say.
Click.
NOAM walks into the bar.
NOAM: Hello, everybody.
EVERYBODY: NOAM!
CLIFF: How’s it hangin’, Noamie?
NOAM: American Democracy is cheap facade whose only purpose is to conceal the corporate puppet masters pulling the strings of our so-called leaders.
WOODY: Hey Mr. Chomsky, how’s Vera doing these days?
NOAM: Interpersonal relationships, even romantic ones, have been rendered all but pointless by the commodification of human emotion. If something does not fit into a prefab Disney-approved mold, or can not be altered with Pfizer’s drugs…
CARLA: Yo, Einstein, I told you to knock it off with all that junk about all of us being ground slowly under the heel of Wall Street. People just wanna relax with a beer after work and you’re bumming them out. Even the weird chubby guy with glasses who has no name.
PAUL: My name is Paul.
CLIFF: Seriously? I thought it was Glenn.
PAUL: In an early episode, yeah, but then they expanded the role a bit to…
NOAM: Your role within the capitalist sphere will only be expanded to the extent that you can aid your corporate masters. Do their bidding and they will be happy to extend the walls of your prison cell by an inch or two.
CARLA: Sam, can we do something about this bozo?
SAM: Not now, Carla, I got my eye on a hot tomato at 3 o’clock.
NOAM: Agriculture has been perverted by the Franken-science purveyors of Monsanto and its ilk, who attempt to “patent” what took nature millions of years to…
CARLA: Sam’s talkin’ about a broad, Poindexter, not real tomatoes. You had something to do with this, didn’t you, Diane?
DIANE: I admit, I invited Professor Chomsky here because I attended one of his lectures at MIT and believed he might raise the level of discourse in this establishment a tad. But I must concur that his line of inquiry is not exactly appropriate for happy hour.
NOAM: Time itself is now granted you by your corporate taskmasters, who “allow” you to enjoy weekends off and expect you to be grateful for the gift of your own hours, happy or otherwise.
GLENN: Listen, pal, we just wanna come here and…hey, I just said my name is Paul. Why is my name Glenn again?
CLIFF: Whatta ya talkin’ about, Glenn? Your name was always Glenn. Ain’t that right, guys?
Entire bar nods in agreement.
GLENN: Something weird’s going on here…
NOAM: They have all fallen down the memory hole, Glenn. Your past has been rewritten in real time, and, knowingly or not, your so-called friends have all fallen in line. No doubt at the behest of the CIA, or NSA, or perhaps some other intelligence organization we’ve yet to discover, all of them mining our personal data to further quote-unquote American interests.
GLENN: I’m gettin’ kinda scared. Maybe this guy is right. Maybe we are all just cogs in a corporate machine of our own making.
CARLA: Enough! No more of this “through the looking glass” nonsense. Hit the bricks, buddy!
CARLA bum rushes NOAM out the front door.
CARLA: No more eggheads in my bar, you hear me?
DIANE: I will keep that in mind for the future. However, I did invite one other distinguished scholar to visit tonight.
Door flies open.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Good evening, all. Which of you would care to debate with me the childish fairy-tale belief in a higher power?
Bar clears out.
