Explanations are for wussies

In case you haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been trying to get Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax to respond to my emails. Here is attempt #7 in the series:

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Carolyn,

People seem concerned about my sanity. I keep writing these creepy emails to you and posting them on my blog and no one is sure why, least of all me.

What the eff are you doing?, they ask in various ways.

Gosh, life would be so much easier if I knew the answer to that.

When people ask me why I am doing a certain thing or why I feel a certain way – and really that’s the same question – once I get over the shock of them honestly expecting that I know the answer, I ease in, reach behind me, and begin to pull reasonable-sounding explanations out of my butthole, just like a Republican. What’s funny is that they often treat my explanations as something more than an ink blot test, evidence that they overestimate my omniscience. Suckers.

I want to give them explanations because explanations make them feel better. Heck, explanations make me feel better. It makes it seem as if I am in control – that what I do is understandable and sensical and therefore predictable and capable of being changed. I prefer to conceptualize my behavior as the result of a little friendly man in my brain pulling levers. That seems way more intuitive than conceptualizing it as an immaculately complicated network of electrical and chemical responses mucked up by all the billions of tiny creatures that live on me and in me.

I’ve considered telling them that I’m just trying to find answers to life’s messy problems from someone who seems more than willing to tackle everyone’s messy problems but mine. I could elaborate that you are paid to do this as a service to your loyal fans who indirectly pay your salary by reading your shit. But I don’t want to sound trite.

I could tell them that I am obsessively driven to have someone in the Galifianakis family draw a cartoon inspired by me so that I can hang it on my wall and light candles around it. But I don’t want them to know that I hold comedic vigils in my living room.

I’m aware, though, that you’re probably not even reading my emails. I’ve made peace with that. I’m optimistic that my emails have been and will continue to be surprising and bizarre enough that it will make the screener reading the emails crack a smile and maybe a soft chuckle just before hitting the delete button. That’s not nothing.

I’ve considered telling them that I’m not doing this for you. That I’m doing it for them. That I’m using you as an excuse to write about ideas in a different way where instead of trying to reason-it-out as I used to, I employ healthy amounts of sarcasm and mockery to make my points.

But the truth is probably more along these lines: I’m really just hoping to attract hotties by more or less advertising, “Hey, look at how clever I am! I’ll give you clever babies!”

Let me tell you, fellas, it’s worked marvels. Chicks are so hot for bloggers.

-- Pulling Levers