Sometimes people just go overboard. If you want to go crazy, why can't you just do it nice and quietly like in the old days? Put on a Napoleon hat and stand in the corner mumbling to yourself. No. Nowadays when we go crazy, we have to go all overboard. It all started with 'Ol Charley Manson; did he really have to murder a whole bunch of people and tattoo a swastika on his forehead? NO, a smiley face would have sufficed. A smiley face tattooed into your forehead says crazy just as good as a swastika does. And murdering people?! Walking around in a bathrobe and throwing cats at people says "crazy!", as well or better. People make it out to be so admirable to be an overachiever, but it led directly to Lady GaGa.Who is just a wannabe disco/drama queen that tries WAY too hard. If we weren't in America, nobody would give a crap about her trying so hard to shock us. (Or Marylin Manson, before her, for that matter.) Instead of her going to karaoke with her best friend who just happens to be Jamacian drag queen and singing bad ABBA songs, we elevate her to star status. She goes overboard and we call it artistic integrity, and let her wear meat and ramble about the military, and somehow manage to care when she chews off her own eyebrows and crawls out of... whatever. I can't wait to see the next generation. The next act that comes along and tries to outGaGa, Gaga. Somehow, I imagine it will look a lot like GWAR meets Hello Kitty meets sequined thong Cher.
I fear there is no going back now, though. With the advent of reality TV, crazy people have their own shows. Hoarders are all the rage. And to get on the boob tube you have to be a little bit more crazy than the last crazy person. If they collected stuff that they found on the sidewalk, you have to one up them, and collect stuff out of your neighbors trash. If they collect cats, you have to have a bazillion snakes, ferrets, and cockroaches. Or, "Hey, I collect giant balls of old scabs!" Ooh, see you're trying to hard.I go crazy in my head also. Only, my crazy manifests itself as: I think about jumping out of my vehicle onto the flatbeds that are passing me on the freeway, or what would happen if gravity was reversed, or if I could fly by gently lifting up my legs, or what if I suddenly developed a irresistible hunger for cat hair. So I assume that lots of people are crazy like me. I just don't think you should try so hard. You don't have to be the best at everything, it isn't always good to overindulge. I am content to be run of the mill, average crazy. So I am just going to put on my bathrobe, my tinfoil headband (a whole tinfoil hat makes my head sweat, and that leads to baldness), grab the cat and write something. That seems to keep the crazy at bay.
