So I caved on yet another New year's Resolution. I missed the gym today. By the time I got back from work, at about 12:30 -- one more late night, as you can tell -- I was too tired to do anything physical (other than the obligatory pre-bed masturbation).
I'm attending my ex's birthday bash this coming Friday and I need to look my best. So I have one week's time to get this lumpy-mashed-potato body of mine tightened up. There exists the slightest shred of possibility that she might still entertain thoughts of taking me home and boning me. On the flip-flop, I must be prepared to look damn good if she no longer has such thoughts and -- Heaven forbid -- has a new beau nipping after her loins.
Christ, I sound like a narcissistic drama queen here, don't I?
Anyway, I gots to get it together.
So I experienced a terrible little revelation recently.
I got this plan for a book, see? I shan't discuss the details at this juncture, for fear of looking like a total nerd, but, suffice to say that after much brainstorming, pondering, and re-hashing, I had the plot and characters pretty much ironed out.
Then I'm looking on iTunes for audiobooks and whammo, there's this novel out there, published early last year, that is uncannily similar to my idea. The concept, story, and characters all seem to mirror mine.
Now I had never heard of this book, nor the author -- a pasty, bald idiot with a staggeringly cheesy goatee, named Larry something-or-other. This was just some sickening coincidence. I found myself feeling outraged, as if he had stolen my idea. That is unlikely because I've never published, or, indeed even written any substantial portion of my novel and there's very little chance he knows who I am.
I still bridle with the perceived injustice, however.
A little while back a similar thing happened to my buddy Andrew -- late of my most recent fucked-up dream (see previous post). He had a charming idea for a kids' book, which he even went so far as to develop illustrations for, before finding an eerily similar book already published. Some of the characters even had the same names!
At the time I'm ashamed to admit that I was actually doubtful of his having developed the idea independently. it seemed too close to be coincidence.
Now, however, I rescind my previous perception and agree wholeheartedly with the shitty nature of the similarity.
Y'ever read the book The 21 Balloons? It was published in '47 and it's about a school teacher who crashes on the island of Krakatoa shortly before the eruption of a volcano there. It is in many aspects nearly identical to as story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in '22. The likeness was entirely accidental.
But it got me to thinkin'.
Maybe there exists some grand, unseen, protean realm that is the consciousness of the human species. In this we are all psychically linked, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, fears all drifting between us like flotsam on a dark, hidden sea.
Carl Jung had his archetypes. Anthropologists have their cultural universals. Maybe we're all thusly connected.
I know what you're thinkin' now. "Rich, this sounds like an intriguing topic. Please expound on it at length."
But nope, I'm done.
Time for bed.
Think all this over and get back to me.
Lookin' good, readers. Lookin' real good.
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