The Merits of Brain Rot

Holler has an analytical mind. She’s brilliant, really, always looking at something with a different spin, always problem solving. Me, I’m smart enough—I didn’t aim high, just wanted to be smarter than any of my siblings, which honestly didn’t take much. Now as an English major, being analytical would come with the territory because our pretentious, pompous breed will pick apart literature till the cows come home. It’s crazy. It’s why I stopped schooling as soon as I got my BA because I was pretty intolerable on the pretentious level when I crossed the stage in 1997. If I had gotten the other degrees, I would have been shot by now, I’m sure. If you meet an English major, you should probably run before you fall into a coma just talking to them.

So once I stopped schooling, I allowed my mind to rot. Mind you, I was letting it rot to begin with. I've never made a good English major. I mean, I got the grades and all; and I can bullshit like no one’s business, but I hate reading literary crap. And I certainly don’t want to spend two weeks arguing about what the author was meaning when he wrote something. It’s Charles Dickens. He was writing for a paycheck—he was thinking: “If I write, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only,” I’ll get paid more than if I write: “It was the same bullshit, but a different year.” Charles Dickens was a capitalist, not a writer.

Which gets me to one of my many pretentious points: It’s an opinion. We’re entitled to opinions. It’s crazy to grade someone on their opinion because it doesn’t match what your opinion on Charles Dickens is. If I make a valid argument about why his works are mind-numbingly dull and I write it well, I should get the same A as the kiss-ass that regurgitated the professor’s opinions on the matter. At least mine was an original thought.

I also tend to let my mind rot because I figure I spend enough of my day thinking anyway, so I should be allowed all the brain candy I want to read. Hence my romance novels. Yes, they are as predictable as a Dick and Jane book for the most part, but there is something comforting about it. The world is a madhouse run by the rabbit in a top hat. You should retreat when you can and make no apologies for it. Plus the sex is usually really good.

My friend Sin has been raving about a guy named Ranger since practically I met her. Actually before I met her. Her DH, upon finding out I was an avid reader, said, “Do you read the Plum novels? Sin is crazy for that Ranger guy.” I was totally clueless. And when DH found out I wrote, he was “You must meet Sin. You’re from the same hometown, you write, you read” and really it was almost like meeting someone you’ve known since birth, since writers are a strange breed anyway. We all have similar crap childhoods—it’s why we write. Creating worlds is the only way to survive in the one you’re living in most of the time. Plus there is always the lunatic hope you’ll publish enough to escape the hometown. I think all writers want to escape their hometowns. Mark Twain was a great writer. Born in Missouri, and lived anywhere but here as soon as he was able. Obviously a smart man.

So after months of avoiding Sin’s stack of books on Ranger, (Okay, they’re the Plum books…but really, it’s Ranger we’re here for) I finally got wound up into #9 (skipping directly to 9, mind you), and so it began. I wasn’t a third into the novel before I raved in lunatic-fanatic fashion about the many merits of Ranger, though my acquaintance with him at best was minimal. “He’s so awesome! No wonder the Babes” (Babes would be lingo for a Ranger fan in the Plum world) “love him! He totally leaves Morelli in the dust.”

Monday I was about two-thirds done with the book, raving once again, and I said, “He rescued her. She was stuck on a fire escape—you won’t believe the shit she gets into—and he unlocked the apartment, opened the window, didn’t question her about it, and just saved the day! He’s so cool! He’s so hot!”

Holler attempted to be analytical and scoffed (really she would have made a brilliant English major, she has the perfect scoff and hates predictable romantic comedies): “You wouldn’t think that if Ranger were a woman.”

Me: *confused* “Well, why would Ranger be a woman?”

Holler: “You know what I mean. If a woman were Ranger and she were as ‘competent’ as Ranger, you’d hate her guts.”

Me: *really confused* “But I don’t understand. Why would I even be reading these books if Ranger were a woman?”

And thus the conclusion of why I made a poor English major. If someone wasn’t getting something-something somewhere in the book, I wasn’t interested in reading it. And it better be good sex, because I’m already having enough bad sex that I don’t need to read anymore about it.