The Mind Is A Terrible Thing

I use my imagination a lot, and for the most part it has served me well, but it also gets me into trouble from time to time. One of the more obvious downsides of being Mr Creativity is that many of the interesting “activities” I dream up to do (I like to think of them as social experiments) are against some law or another, they have so many of those now, laws that is, that it's hard to keep track sometimes. They keep coming up with all these new ones, but forget to get rid of the old ones. Eventually everything will be against the law. Or maybe we'll just get hit by a meteor. I'm rooting for the meteor, but we'll see what happens.

Another downside to creativity is that your creations sometimes have a way of persisting all on their own. They start taking over the place, bossing you around. At first it seems like you're just having some fun, letting your imagination play out, watching were it goes. Neato. But sometimes you think up something that really resonates deeply with your Inner Nutjob. It then gently attaches itself to you without you even realizing it, and becomes part of you. It's very much like getting addicted to a drug; it doesn't happen all at once, and by the time you realize that it has its hooks in you, it's too late. Women are like that too, now that I think about it.

For example, I have all these different mental “settings” that I frequently find myself wandering into. These settings are like mental movie sets, where different scenes can play out. The scenes are always different, but the setting is always the same. Many of the settings are pleasant and stimulating, and help me to think things through, come up with new ideas, or put me over the top when I'm trying to get off. Some of them, however, are a real drag. Here's an example of one of the settings that's a drag:

There is a Courtroom in My Brain
I often find myself in my own mental courtroom. I am always the defendant. I'm sitting there in the witness stand being cross-examined by the Prosecuting Attorney. He's asking me questions that pertain to whatever “crime” I have committed, and I'm trying to explain myself, while the jury sits and listens. The Prosecuting Attorney is always trying to trick me into saying something incriminating, like in a real court scene. But here's the crazy part: The crime itself.

The crime is always some utterly trivial thing that happened in real life, but is rarely something that one would actually end up in court over. For example, if I get in my car and realize that the car is a mess, I might suddenly imagine that I'm on trial, and the Prosecuting Attorney is asking me things like “so when you finished eating the chicken sandwich from the Wendy's drive-thru, what did you do with the bag?” and he holds up a Wendy's bag as evidence, waves it around in front of the jury. I'll say something like, “well, see, I was driving, and traffic was kind of heavy, so I just threw it on the floor...” and the Prosecutor does that thing they do where they are talking to you but looking at the jury, and he says “I see. So you just decided to throw this piece of garbage on the floor of you car. Hm. Interesting.”

Yes, it's ridiculous. I know. It gets worse.

Sometimes the crime is something that doesn't even make any sense at all. For example, I may be shopping at the grocery store and decide to try a new body spray (yes, The Captain likes to smell nice). Last time I bought the “Phoenix” scent, let's say, but this time I decide to try the “Tsunami” scent instead (which sucks, by the way, smells like cat piss). Suddenly I'm in my mental courtroom, and the Prosecuting Attorney is asking me why I chose “Tsunami” this time. The jury watches me closely as I explain that I was starting to get tired of “Phoenix” and thought “Tsunami” had a nice ring to it.

The weird thing is that there is a part of my mind where this all makes complete sense. I never make a conscious decision to engage in these retarded scenarios, I just suddenly find myself in them. Sometimes I will have played out one of these scenes for a full minute before I even realize I'm doing it. By all outward appearances, I'm just a normal guy pushing around a shopping cart, you'd never even know that I was actually on trial for switching deodorants.

Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?
This is another scenario I often find myself in, and it's very similar to the one above. It may be even crazier than the courtroom thing, I really can't tell anymore. It involves me getting pulled over by a cop. This one I only have when I'm driving. What usually happens is I will imagine that I get pulled over for no reason at all, and the cop will notice that I'm acting nervous (I can get very nervous around cops) and then he will start asking me lots of weird questions that don't have anything to do with anything. For example, he'll notice a baseball cap in the backseat and ask me if it's my baseball cap. I'll say no, that baseball cap belongs to a friend of mine, I don't wear baseball caps. He'll ask why my friend left his cap in my car, and I'll say that I don't know, I wasn't even aware that there was a cap back there, I guess he took it off and forgot it, but the cop acts suspicious, and starts asking me all kinds of questions, like what do I do for a living, but is very skeptical of the answer I give him, which then leads to a long string of questions about how I got started in that particular line of work, where I was trained, the full name of my first boss, the name of my boss's wife, etc. He's interrogating me, looking for holes in my story, and I know that if I can't remember any of the details, he'll arrest me. I usually snap out of it before it gets that far.

I've asked a couple of friends if they do this sort of thing themselves, and they said that they do not, but I suspect that they do and are just not aware of it. I could be wrong, but I bet if I had a chance to walk around freely inside their minds, I would find a lot of really crazy stuff they didn't even know was there. I have a friend who's a Scientologist (sort of), I'll have to ask him about it. Say what you want, those guys get into some pretty far out shit, I'm sure he'll have something interesting to say about it.

Most of the mental scenarios that sprout up in my mind are much more benign, however, and do not feed off of my apparent Persecution Complex (which goes nicely with my Jesus Complex). Some of them are actually fun. For example:

I Am The King of Everything
This is a scenario I found myself thinking about a lot for about 6 months, and then it just stopped suddenly. For the most part, I see it as positive, though I've always had a little trouble with the basic premise. It goes like this: I am the ultimate ruler of the United States, sometimes the world, but usually just the US. This means that if I wake up one morning and decide that everyone wears a purple hat on Wednesdays, then everyone wears a purple hat on Wednesdays. But, actually, it's never stuff like that, it's always serious stuff, like what to do about the Iraq war, how people should be taxed, what to do about corporations, whether or not to pull the plug on Terry Schivo, etc. That's when I started doing this one, back during that Schivo thing (which I never came to a conclusion about, by the way). As Supreme Ruler of Uhmerika, I would fix all of our country's problems and make everything work properly. Ok, you can stop laughing now.

It's actually an interesting mental exercise. Instead of just criticizing all the ridiculous crap that our leaders do, I would actually have to create a solution. The problem with this scenario was that I could never quite figure out how I had actually become the King of America in the first place, or why everyone would go along with my crazy schemes and not just chop my head off. I finally had to settle on invisible aliens. The Invisible Aliens from Galtrox-9 would enforce the laws and make sure no one JFK'd me. Yes, I would make a great king. First thing I would do is give everyone a million dollars. See how easy it is?

And While We're Talking Fantasies...
This all reminds me of something which is a little off topic, but it's kind of related. It's in the ballpark anyway.

Sometimes when I'm having a fantasy, the sexual kind, I will accidentally switch to a non-sexual fantasy. I don't mean to do it, I just get carried away and it just happens. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to fantasizing, and occasionally i get caught up in the mundane details to the point of rediculosity (yes, that's a word).

For example, let's say I'm fantasizing that I'm banging my girlfriend's younger sister. That sounds like a good fantasy, right? There she is, young, hot, naked, forbidden – all the proper ingredients for a good pre-bedtime jerkfest. But I'm not content with just the basics, I need to know how the whole thing came about, the story behind it. I'm not going to just jump right in and start having sex with her, that would be too simple. So I start creating the scenario...

My girlfriend's family has rented a beach house and invited me along. The beach house is not far from where one of their relative's live, let's say. It's my girlfriend's Grandpa, actually, so they all decide to go pay Gramps a visit, since they're in the area. They decide that I should stay back at the beach house because...

hmmm...

because he's sick? No, kind of a bummer, I don't want any sick people in my fantasy...

because he is very eccentric and does not like strangers at his house, yeah, that'll work. And just as they are about to leave, Cindy, the younger sister, suddenly claims to have terrible stomach cramps and decides she should stay behind, just in case. Nobody wants Cindy vomiting in the car, so off they go to Grandpa's house, leaving me behind with poor, sick Cindy.

Only Cindy isn't actually sick at all. I mean, she's got a fever alright, but it's a fever for the flavor of a Captain. Yes, this fantasy is coming together nicely, I'll be banging hot little Cindy in no time.

Still playing the stomachache angle, Cindy asks me if I could rub her tummy for her, that will help with the cramps. So she stretches out on the couch and I start rubbing her tummy, just trying to be helpful. She has her eyes closed and, at one point, I notice that she is starting to breath differently, and my hand begins moving across her skin in slower, more sensual motions. I notice that her hips have begun to rock ever so gently, almost imperceptibly, to the motion of my hand. Now I'm breathing funny too, and she notices this. Her eyes slowly open and look into mine as she gently places her hand on top of my hand and guides me lower, just below her belly button, while her other hand gracefully snakes around my neck, oh this is going to be good, and pulls my face close to hers. I know I shouldn't be doing this, it would break my girlfriend, Janet's, heart... No, not Janet. Lucy. No, not Lucy either. Hmmm. Barbara. Yeah, that's it, it would break my girlfriend, Barbara's, heart.

But I'm overwhelmed, I never before realized how beautiful Cindy was. She always seemed so innocent before, but as she guides my hand down further, my fingers suddenly brush along her clit ring, and I realize that she is not so innocent after all, well well. And then, just as our lips touch, just as the fantasy is reaching critical mass, we hear a car pull into the driveway, holy crap, it's the family! What the hell are they doing back so soon??? My girlfriend, Barbara, bursts through the door just as we are trying to straighten ourselves up, but both of our faces are flushed, we look guilty as hell, Cindy's bra is half off, and I can tell from Barbara's penetrating glare that she knows exactly what was going on. Boy, I'm in trouble now.

Next thing I know I'm on the witness stand, and the Prosecuting Attorney is pacing back and forth in front of me. “So let me get this straight, Mr Smack” he says. “You - being the Good Samaritan that you are - decided to rub your girlfriend's little sister's tummy. Because she had a 'tummy ache'. Is that correct?”

“Well, um, actually, that was sort of Cindy's idea...” I try to explain, the jury watching me closely. I know they are out to get me. They're always out to get me. Where are those goddamn invisible aliens when I need them?