After that, who'd fucking care what the story and characters were. Because, in a few simple words, I'd have essentially said it ALL. The rest of the book, therefore, would have to be just bland comfort words, to help calm the reader down.

The problem is, of course, that when the book comes out, people are gonna draw conclusions. And some of them will come to see me, all pissed off.

"You hate culture!" they'll scream. And: "So, if you're so damn smart, then why don't you tell us how to make culture stop being the ugly stupid worthless boring piece of shit it currently is. -- Or, at least, tell us beautiful, powerful, intelligent, caring, creative, spiritual, humane, highly-valued, vastly entertaining people out here how to stop lapping it up like we're all starved out inside."

I'll, of course, have my answer ready (in fact, I'm figuring it out, as we speak), but first I'll make them listen to a few hours of My Bloody Valentine and/or Blonde Redhead while I knock off a quick Vanity Fair piece in the corner. Then, maybe at the end of "Messenger" or "Don't Ask Why", I'll tell them how, if they wanna get rid of their ugly stupid worthless boring piece of shit culture, the first thing they oughta do is replace their fucking candy-ass so-called Olympic Games.

They'll no doubt gasp and say, "Yeah -- but with what?"

At which point I'll casually interject, almost as an afterthought, "With itself blindfolded, of course."

"Take all the current Olympic sports," I'll explain in language even an infant could understand, "and do them all blindfolded. Blindfolded pole vault. Blindfolded swimming. Blindfolded Boxing. The blindfolded mile.

"Then, when doing the Olympics blindfolded starts getting boring again, start blindfolding the athletes in the dressing room using non-removeable blindfolds and don't help them find their event when it's show time -- so they have to desperately stagger around the whole Olympics stadium for hours not knowing where they're going, occasionally getting into vicious brawls with fans, and ultimately missing their event entirely, disgracing their whole nation and sports in general.

"Then, a few years later, when that gets boring too, blindfold them in their hotel room before they leave, so most of them don't even find the stadium where the Olympics are being held and, instead, wind up in the wrong place without knowing it, so suddenly Olympic-class athletes are doing broad jumps off the tops of buildings and pole vaulting into outdoor billboards on strip mall highways, or running the mile through a series of unexpected plate glass windows."

"OK," they'll say, "but the Olympics are only every 4 years. What's everybody supposed to do for the 3 years in between?"

At which point I'll get all massively self-righteous and unload.

"See!!!" I'll say, showing something between repulsion and contempt, "That's why you're all such a buncha losers. You're just sooo pissed about how I'M ALWAYS RIGHT about EVERYTHING and YOU'RE ALWAYS WRONG about EVERYTHING, that whenever I put forward some simple solution to help you save your pathetic miserable asses, you always have to find some dumb little nit-picky way to try to spoil it."

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