Brad Walsh

Everybody Gets A Bite

I feel like people sometimes ask the stupid questions because they know they’re stupid and they just want you to get mad and react. I’m talking about the completely insanely stupid questions that only a person who literally lived in a bubble at the bottom of the ocean with food delivery and recycled air since 1975 would ask. I mean, I hope that’s why these questions get asked. I would much prefer to think that it’s because people want a reaction, rather than deal with the fact that there are this many brain-dead people out there who have to put on pants in the morning and trim their nails with something sharp.

Smaller but related, there are the little weird actions of bored people desperate for something to liven things up. Like if they say your name and you don’t turn around to meet, greet, exchange phone numbers and impregnate them, you’re a dickeating asshole. Or if they tweet at you and you don’t respond, then they fabricate a blog about how they spent the evening with you at a restaurant and you got so drunk on the red wine you don’t drink that you vomited into a potted plant, and then your publicist is calling to ask if the plant was living or plastic, and then the manager of the restaurant wants to know when you’re coming back.

And then what? You’re worth something more? Because why? Because Shanna Moakler called you a stupid bitch? Because Kourtney Kardashian once texted angrily at your Twitter name from her Blackberry? Because a person who is paid to pretend to be Vanessa Hudgens blocked your account? Is this living? Sometimes this gives me panic attacks because humanity can be scary as hell. Humans are creepy. Not just teen girls. Not just crazy fanatics. Regular people get very weird. Normal people from who knows where… they can just say and do the most fucked up thing and not even get that it’s not cool, or that you are a complete stranger, and they still don’t get it even if you tell them. Oh, and you owe them all, by the way. Your time belongs to them. Or else you’re ungrateful. Because they are the reason you’re alive and breathing. Your mother and father? Pointless. Even though there was never an American vote to make you their idol, and they didn’t have to commit any money, texts, or time for you to be where you are now. And you just spent a ten hour day running your own life and then had to slap on a smile to go do some bullshit you’re contractually obligated to do even though you want to maybe sit down and eat a proper dinner once this week.

Digressions.

I will say this. If you have a friend who has a brain, and who understand social cues, and who has manners and knows how to behave, and acts with any kind of basic decency in public, and has ever read a newspaper, and will not speak simply because the sound of their own blessed voice gives flight to dead baby birds and platinum shit dragons… hang on to that person. They are rare, rare, rare.