superheroes 11.04.02
STEPS TO BECOMING YOUR OWN SUPERHERO
By Yours Truly
1) Get off the fuck off the internet.
2) Purchase a "Best of the 80s" compilation. Pick the worst track and
make it your theme-song. Don't choose song titles which end with question
marks. If it has an explanation mark, you've gone gold.
3) Pick a name. Think of a barnyard animal or lunchmeat and of course, suffix
it with "man", "boy", "girl",
"woman"... or better yet, "child."
4) Review your childhood Halloween costumes. While you're drawing, decide which
two you would never think to wear again and encorporate elements of both into
the design.
5) Do you have hair on your knuckles, buttocks, nipples, public region or feet?
If so, wax accordingly.
6) Walk through the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Scan the highest shelves
and pick a brand without "special prizes inside."
7) Find your worst picture from junior high and tape to the box. Write in blank
space of the box: "SPECIAL PRIZES ARE FOR LOSERS!" with a sharpie.
Find four items on the floor. By the way, hairballs and used condoms count.
8) Find a mirror and get naked. Use the sharpie again and write: "THIS
MIRROR IS GONNA COME!"
9) Take your drawing from step four and hit the street.
10) Stay naked.
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I
heard a story on radio the other day about one woman's lifelong pursuit to
become a superhero. When she was eight years old, she started a list of things
she would actively pursue to earn superpowers. As she grew older and it became
clear that she'd never inherit the ability to fly or shoot laserbeams from her
eyes, she would use the list as a metaphorical reference. By the time she hit
twenty-one, she had, indeed, covered most of the items of the list. And yet,
instead of celebrating or even recognizing the achievement for what it was, she
became preoccupied with the remaining items. Eventually, this finicky obsession
grew into a classic Neil Armstrong-complex. She locked her bedroom door for two
months, turning paralyzed, idle and slovenly in her own pile of shit. This
is precisely what I am afraid of.
Above my doorknob are the lyrics to David Bowie's Golden Years: "Don't
let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere..." but I'm full of
hypocrises. Last Saturday night, I parked myself on a rocking chair, reading
Rilke with a bottle of rum. Still, when I say that I don't intend to live past
the age of twenty-seven, this is, by no means, a product of sloppy sarcasm. I
truly believe that if I do not attain a level of cast-iron success in the next
few years, it will never happen at all.
Sometime soon, this coastal migration will live up to its promises. I can feel
it. This winter, I've survived only on my pretenses. And although I'm often
disgusted the sheer solitude and phoniness of
"To face ourselves. That's the hard thing. The imagination. That's
God's gift to make the act of self-examination bearable."
- John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation