’cause I’m special. So special.

How can I not love a song about being desperate for someone’s attention?

And trust me, I will get it. whatever it takes.

I hate feeling like I am being ignored. Makes me increasingly willing to do crazy shit just to get the object of my attentions to acknowledge my existence.

Which is not very introverted of me, is it?

I guess life is too complicated to be reduced to a single two position variable like the whole introvert versus extrovert thing.

I’ve craved attention for as long as I can remember. But I have also been shy for just as long. I’m drawn to the limelight yet get nervous when I am the center of attention for too long anywhere else.

If I ever won an Emmy, I would be far more comfortable giving my acceptance speech than at the cocktail parties after the ceremony.

It would be simpler – though by no means better – if I had never put the brakes on my ego train way back in my late teens and blossomed into the truly obnoxious and self-absorbed young man I was once poised to become.

On the one hand, I wound have been such a colossal asshole. A real heinous anus, if you will. Selfish, self-righteous, vain, pushy, and so in love with the sound of my own voice that we’re making wedding plans.

One the other hand, maybe I would have actually gotten somewhere in life instead of hiding from the world and never even supporting myself.

With a huge ego, I would have had the confidence to pursue all the scholarships and bursaries I could get my greedy paws on so I could have been able to go to a decent university instead of UPEI.

And from there, who knows? I might have attracted some mentors who saw my obvious genius and wanted to foster and shelter it, and help it (and me) climb the ladder of success till I reached the top.

Or at the very least, got tenure.

They’re the same thing in academia, really.

But no, my parents yanked me out of university and wrecked my life.

And I was a dumb kid who did not realize how extraordinary my gifts were and how they could be my ticket out of my crummy little small town life and into something big and bright and beautiful, but only if I took charge of my life and dreamed big and followed through on those big dreams.

To be honest, I had no idea I was even in charge of anything.

I mean, since when? My whole life, I had just followed the usual script. Go to school, get good marks, go to uni, ditto, get a job with your undergrad degree or hit the snooze button on life and go on to get a Masters, get a career, a life, a husband, a house, a truly top notch TV… the whole shebang.

But then I was forced to regress. Go back to my comatose hometown, move back in to my childhood home, even the exact same bedroom.

No wonder I fell apart on all levels. They cut me off at the knees.

But that was thirty years ago.

What’s my excuse now?

More after the break.

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One hundred percent entertainment

That’s what these fine young men provide.

Note that they got their one black member to sing Circle of Life (and do a spectacular job), and their whitist member to do the racially cringe-fest that is “I Wanna Be Like You” from Jungle Book.

If you aren’t familiar with the latter tune, limber up your cringe muscles and take a gander at a scene/song that has aged like day old milk.

And in case you are wondering, yup, that’s a black dude singing all those lovely lyrics about wanting to be human, too.

Because, you see, he’s reached the top and had to stop being a monkey and become a real human being.

Thank God Mowgli (the kid) isn’t white.

He easily could have been. He basically has the Tarzan origin story. He could have been whiter than Irish linen.

I mean, this is Kipling, after all.

Personally, I would not have included the song in the medley or anything else.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the song, and I have since I was a kid. But I also loved this now racially intolerable ditty :

But I have explained my feelings about that one in a previous post.

My point is that sometimes things get disenfranchised by history through no inherent fault of their own, the times have just changed.

Makes you wonder what things of today will be politically toxic in the future.

It’s impossible to know, of course. I can’t think of a group that is currently being oppressed but is on the rise.

Well, I can think of one, but I don’t wanna go there.

Trans people are currently in the crosshairs of the bigots and haters, who may have secretly been surprised to learn that they have always hated drag queens.

No wonder they need to watch Fox News et al so much. How else would they keep their false reality up to date?

It would be so embarrassing to be caught expressing your lifelong belief in something that their overmind now informs them is bad and has always been.

When you have such an elaborate shared universe to maintain in your head, with constant updates, it’s no wonder they can’t spare the brain power to think for themselves or vote to protect their own self-interest.

The current crop of Trumpeters has been politically lobotomized and the truly tragic thing is that some day they might realized how badly Trump raped their minds, hearts, and souls, and what a horrible day that will be for them.

My thoughts and prayers go out to them for the dark times ahead.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.