June 15, 2005

I'm kidding around, of course. I don't really have voices in my head. Except my own, and everyone has that voice. Like when you read something and it says "Machine Wash Only" and you hear the voice in your head (your own voice, hopefully) saying "Machine Wash Only". I sometimes imagine that this is the voice of a little person inside my head, and when I hear him talking I think it's my own voice. And then sometimes he might play jokes on me and use other people's voices, so that when I read a label I would still hear "Machine Wash Only," but I would hear it in the voice of an old English woman, or Donald Duck.

And maybe that would explain why, when I hear my own voice on a recording, I always think "I don't sound like that!" Or it might also explain why sometimes I get a song stuck in my head, because he has a little radio in there. In fact, for many many years I used to get this song stuck in my head that goes "It's a hap-hap-happy day..." and I know it was from a cartoon but couldn't remember which one. When I used to sing it, folka always seemed to think I was crazy and that there never was any such a cartoon. But I know there was, I didn't just make up that song. Unless it's the little man in my head who made it up.

It's just like when I was a kid and I used to watch TV shows where there would be like a giant robot, and inside the robot's head there would be like a regular guy pulling levers and pushing buttons and maybe even using a gigantic steering wheel to operate it. And then I would imagine that maybe I'm just a giant robot to a little tiny man who lives in my head. But as I got older I realized that, if this was true, then I was really nothing more than just a shell. Just a body. I didn't have feeling or thoughts or anything. Anything that I thought or remembered or felt, were really just thoughts and memories and feelings that the little man was having. He was my brain and my heart and my personality. So in reality, I was the little man living inside my own head!! And that would make me question my existence and the nature of God and the universe, and I would just totally freak out.

But then like tonight, I went out to a midnight showing of Batman Begins, and when I left I got in my car and I turned the stereo up real loud. And you know how when you're little, you might watch The Six Million Dollar Man or MacGuyver, and think it's so totally awesome that you run outside and then start pretending to run in slow motion, or crush an aluminum can and make that bionic 'na-na-na-na" sound, or even just prentend to make a nuclear detonator from two paper clips and a wad of bubble gum? Well, I still do that. Sometimes. Like tonight I was driving home and I was pretending that I was Batman and that my car was the Batmobile.

Now this is not insane. Every guy does it, in fact. It's just that no one talks about it because they're all afraid that everyone will think that they are insane, the same way that you are thinking that I am insane right now. But it's not like I've lost touch with reality and really believe that I'm Batman.

Anyway, I've reached the conclusion that, with the kids gone for the summer, and my still not having a job, I've just been thinking entirely too much. Not that that's unusual for me (it's what this whole website is all about, after all) but just that I need to find something else to do. Mostly what I think about is how much I miss my kids or all the stuff I still need to get done before school starts, or what I should do to find a new job or what that job should be, or finances or whatever. Which would all be fine except that I spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about Donlad Duck voices or little tiny people living in my head.

Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much time thinking about stupid random pointless crap. The fact that I even verbalized that sentence would seem to indicate that I do. And usually when I think that, I think about the guy from Little House on The Prairie, and how he just always seemed to be working his ass off, you know, plowing the fields and planting and everything, working part time in the saw mill and always hauling crap back and forth from Mankato, and of course he always had to work extra double hard at it, too, just because he sucked so bad at it. Anyway, the reason I think about him is because if I happened to meet some old dude like that and talked to him for even just .002 seconds, he'd tell me how hard he works and doesn't have time for any such nonsense.

The reason I know this is because I've actually met old dudes who would tell me stuff like this, about how they didn't have time for any of my nonsense because they worked so hard. And that might be so, really, but I wonder what do they think about when they're walking behind a plow for 12 hours a day? Like, I would probably be working the plow or picking beans and still be thinking about Superman or what it would be like to live underground like an ant. But I guess all they think about is "I'm plowing this ground up, I'm plowing this ground up, I'm plowing this ground up..." I mean, it may be really really hard work but it does seem like it would be totally totally boring.

But boring or not, it does seem to follow that because they worked their asses off, they had very little leisure time, and because they had very little leisure time, they are much much better men than me. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel bad about myself, or inferior when some old dude tells me how much harder than me he worked when he was my age, but I hardly ever do. In fact, depending on how well I know the dude, usually I'm just thinking of sarcastic ways to piss him off, or just being grateful that I don't have to work as hard as he says he did.