Saturday, January 3, 2009

Sometimes I'm Almost Happy (Cigar Smoke 12-25-08)

You know, it’s funny but I seem to have a reputation for not being a happy guy. I really don’t know why that is. I think of myself as a happy person. Yes, occasionally I might get a bit cynical, but not enough to put out the torch of my shining happiness. OK, maybe there’s a little pessimism thrown in there. And yes, a dash of fatalism and a few over-the-top sighs now and then. But dammit, does that make me an unhappy person?

No, it does not. What it does make me is a thinking person who – if he thought things through and saw things as they really were and acted like it was not like that – he would be lying to himself and his fake pretend happiness would be seen by his family and friends as false and ugly and downright dishonest and they would all yell at him, “Aha! You are not only unhappy but you are a lying sack of disgusting cowardly pretend happiness that none of us likes or even grudgingly would admire.”

Hey, re-read that last paragraph. There’s a lot of truth in there and I want you to be as happy as I think I am. And if you can’t figure it out, don’t tell me you can just to make me happy. Trust me, it won’t make me happy. It’ll make me think of you as everyone thinks of me. I’ll know you are just a miserable, unhappy glob of chromosomes walking around faking it.

Usually my well-disguised happiness shows up bright and bubbly at the breakfast table. I’ll just be stirring my coffee and asking Margie-Wargie how my little Muffie-Wuffie slept last night, and I’ll look down at the Los Angeles Times and I’ll read about how the drug lords down in Tijuana just killed 39 people and beheaded nine of them, and I’ll make some sort of exclamation like, “Holy crap, who does that? What kind of world do we live in?” And Marge will say “That’s a record. Took you only five seconds to get pissed off.”

Technically, of course, she may be right. Yes, I am yelling and I am loud and the skin on my forehead is tighter than Nancy Pelosi’s face. But does just getting mad make someone unhappy? I don’t think it does. It just makes me aware that I’m living in a semi-sick world and that horrible things will happen, and I will hate those horrible things and I will express my hatred of those horrible things with very audible anger. I can still pet puppies and eat hot fudge sundaes at hockey games after reading that stuff. I still have a shot at being happy. You know I’m right. Admit it — it might make me happy.

Another example of people thinking I’m not happy occurred the other night. I’m watching the tube and Deepak Chopra comes on and old Dipstick says in his freaky spiritual precious pseudo-intellectual subdued way that he thinks it’s our fault that the terrorists blew up the hotels and killed all those people in India. The learned man thinks we caused it. Chop Face doesn’t say one damn word about the actual 300 people who were slaughtered or about the fact that the murderers were Islamic terrorists. No, he just jumps right in on how bad we are here in the US and in the West. And how we need to work with these maggots.

I was so mad I threw a magazine and screamed some non-spiritual words at the TV and scared my poor old dog silly, and I was truly ticked off. Hell, I’m still mad at Sixpak and his bullshit. But, I do not think that makes me un-frigging-happy. I still think I’m a pretty happy guy trying to survive in a pretty messed-up world. Just because I get mega-pissed at the Dipstick Sixpaks of the world does not mean I am unhappy. Nope, I’m damn happy. Wanna fight?

Anyway, I finally calm down and I am happier than a lark dating a clam. That’s pretty happy. And then a few days later I’m watching “CSI: Las Vegas” and one story is about some homeowner getting harassed by some punk kids driving around with baseball bats and playing Mailbox Baseball. These punks had smashed four of his previous mailboxes, so Mr. Homeowner decides to give them a little surprise and fills the mailbox with cement.

The guy riding shotgun takes a swing at the mailbox, and indeed gets a surprise. He breaks his arm and shoulder, and the driver loses control of the car and they crash into a tree and are both killed. The mailbox and the gene pool high-five each other. But the CSI cops arrest the homeowner for negligent homicide.

There was no outrage at the four previous crimes, no being upset about trespassing and the car being on private property, and no concern that the bat swingers were driving drunk. Nope. I guess they just got on their cell phone and called DeepAss ChopSix and he told them it was the homeowner’s fault for buying his home in the first place.

OK, you finally got me. I was not happy about this one.

Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.