Compulsively Commensurate Consumption

I finished James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces right before all the Oprah-induced hoopla last year, just before the cries of "liar" rained down on the disgraced author...and so what? Good storytelling has an awful lot to do with exaggeration, and though Frey embellished his stint in rehab and his own heroism, his courage, to an embarrassing degree, well, this much was obvious from a chapter or so into the book.

(Even if you haven’t read the book, you must read the respective parodies written by David Cross & H. Jon Benjamin...fabulous.)

Regardless of the rea$on why Frey fictionalized his own life, I fully identify with his out-and-out NEED to consume, the feeling of over-powering ravenousness...

I, too, need to be over-stimulated, to ingest, but my vices are in the "socially-acceptable" vein, so to speak: caffeine, cigarette-smoke, drama, criticism, adoration...something, y’know, palpable.

Oh, I devour adoration as though it was food; I chew through the supple-though-varied meats of applause, drink in the thirst-quenching lemonade of adulation, suck in the pungent fragrance of affection...

But this need for consumption leads me to the logical conclusion of why meditation is frequently used in addiction-recovery – if you’re a veritable vacuum-cleaner in need of something, why not suck in air?

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm.

This would be great but for fact that I sit still about as well as an assless man on a bed of nails; I need sedatives to watch a two-hour movie; hell, I get cranky at a red light...but I’m working on it. I’m drinking an unequivocally MASSIVE bottle of water right now, deep breathing like a hippie at an incense-fair, sitting still like a coyote strapped to a chair, legs and back cramping all around me...

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm.

Self-improvement is a nasty bit of torture, yes...but like many other day-to-day tortures, however, this is necessary if I’m to be around long enough to let my age catch up to my over-ripened curmudgeonly-crankiness.

I’ll let you know if "oooooooohhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm" and smoking in the bath are mutually exclusive.