Hell
Nothing gets you thinking about Hell like a Gary Larson cartoon. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if we're not on Earth at all, but are actually in Hell. After all, this is a world where there doesn't seem to be much justice or compassion, the bad guys get to laugh all the time, and there are Christian fundamentalists saying how we're all evil anyway. I mean, sure, I've got to discount all the people I know who are actually happy and content, but, hey, this is my solipsistic fantasy, I can say whatever I want to say. I mean, this just ranks up there with the hallucination that I'm actually in a simulated environment, and everyone around me is an android and/or other artificially intelligent agent. (And no, I don't consider myself all that crazy because I know for a fact that I'm not the first person to consider this.) But I read through Pulp by Charles Bukowski yesterday, and I take the inscription in front as a personal dedication to me and my work. (It reads "To all bad writing"). I've read a couple of his short stories before, so don't worry, this parody wasn't my first exposure to his work, but I was completely taken when the book opened up with a search for Celine (Ferdinand Louise, not Dion). The mind just loves recursion, I guess. I discovered both Bukowski and Celine at the Virgin Megastore in Las Vegas on my demented Christmas trip , so it all makes some sort of weird sense. Or so my frontal lobes would have me believe. But I am finding my train of thought being derailed time and time again, so I ought to just stop here and quit while I'm ahead.
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