BORED OUT OF MIND

by Jonathan Lowe

“Insecurity,” repeats Bernard Grossman unequivocally, “is what makes the world go round.” (Love, of course, has shriveled completely out of contention). It is insecurity, says Grossman, while on a lecture tour at $6000 per hour, which has been inculcated into the American psyche to the exclusion of everything-objectivity, perception, all the major emotions, sanity, and even so called ‘!common sense”. I caught Grossman’s lecture at Purgatory Junior College high in the Rockies after having read a circular which was stuck in my windshield wiper at the Perimeter Mall (where I’d been to see “The Fly” at one of those theater multiplexes which play second-run specials—a ticket and popcorn for a buck fifty). I figured I needed a highbrow change of pace since my brain had appeared (to me at least) somewhat flabby on my most recent CAT scan. The $14 fee and the hard seat notwithstanding, I was determined to enjoy the evening, and before introductions were even completed I’d already forgotten that “Robot Monster” was playing across town for aback—which included the privilege of choosing sides in the bloody Cola wars. Thanks to Grossman’s reacting to his own introduction with applause (not to mention his exaggerated facial tics and the ability to make clearing his throat sound curiously like the swirl of water in a toilet bowl), I soon no longer regretted the fact that my wiper blade had failed to dislodge the advertisement in question, even after twenty consecutive sweeps. And so, with a growing sense of anticipation, I awaited the opportunity to exercise my long dormant brain with the help of a man who had earned honorary degrees in physics and parapsychology from Upper Volta University and had gained a GED from Mickey Rooney Institute of Burbank. What follows is a brief summation of what Grossman sees through his red, road map eyes as he stares out across the experience of eighteen months since the publication of “Grossman’s Guide to the Galaxy” (a book that not only rocked the scientific community because it described the Andromedian Galaxy, but which enabled Grossman to -achieve his more practical dream of being interviewed by Robin Leach on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”.) Grossman On Astral Projection “Looking down on your body is very difficult to achieve, as you may have suspected. While many people hate their bodies, they have yet to master this skill. Simply loathing what you look like will not work in most instances. You have to be able to do it with your eyes closed. Once you learn to do this, however, all that remains is really despising “where you are”.” Grossman On Aliens “There is an Intelligence at work in the Universe and it’s damn well not us. Of all the planets my consciousness has visited I have yet to witness a similar form of life. Is this an accident I ask, or rather by design? And what will happen when this Intelligence decides which Designer Aliens are “in” style and which “out”. Will we bipeds really become the rage in space? Of course if all of this IS by chance, then I suspect that the galaxies are merely cells in the body of this other Intelligence. In which case Black Holes can be thought of as cancer cells associated with not getting enough fiber in the diet. My attempts at mental projection in order to communicate with this Being (if it exists) have been blocked by what may be its blood/brain barrier. Optically, of course the telescope on Mount Palomar can only see as far as the walls of its intestines. Viewing is difficult due to the presence of gas.”

Grossman On Entertainment “Humans are unique, and particularly in that they alone have developed extremely short attention spans. (Only a hummingbird’s is shorter). This is the direct result of the advent of the 30 second TV commercial. Searching the fossil records, we discover that prehistoric man may have taken as long as three months on a single cave drawifig. Today we pride ourselves on how many subway cars we can vandalize in three minutes. And even best sellers these days have titles such as “The One Minute Lover”. In fact without music videos and special effects we become bored after exactly 84 seconds. Last year it was 92 seconds. When the countdown reaches zero, someone will push the BUTTON as soon as the batteries in their Sonny Watchman die. Question: If an ancient race with solutions to all of our problems arrives on earth, will we have the patience to listen-or will we put them on TV and judge them by the Neilsen ratings? Grossman On Love “The major problem with love is that because of high divorce rates of recent decades, homo sapiens have come to realize that they can probably fall in -love with just about anything and anybody. So now it has become harder to fall in love, even over a candlelight dinner. Unless, of course, it is too dark to see what is going on? (Finally) Grossman On Insecurity “The reason insecurity is so important during our present state of evolution is because we’ve finally realized that we’re not so big after all. It all started about the time Galileo took out a comprehensive insurance policy on his new telescope. It will end on the day when we suddenly wake up to the realization that there are more lawyers on the planet than non-lawyers. Epilogue At home, later the same evening I practiced flexing my new mental muscles, an with incredible strain eventually managed to float my consciousness out the window and high over my house. But after a minute and a half of this I became inexplicably bored, which I suspect was not only because it was too dark to see what was going on in any neighbor’s fenced-in pool. Was this really the final frontier? I asked myself bleakly.

Quickly dodging several quite common birds, I returned to my body, changed clothes, a cruised over to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Shove for the 37th time, making a mental note to sue Grossman for at least a refund. But when I came out of the movie there was a second leaflet stuck in my wiper blade. Grossman, it said, was moving to the Wimpton Com-munity Garden Club & Civic Center for a limited engagement. (Obviously, though, he knew from where the bulk of his audiences would continue to come.). I decided to drop the idea of a lawsuit and buy another ticket when I saw the subject: “Intermediate Projection-Getting Higher Than A Kite”. There was also an order form attached for Grossman’s second offering “The Missing Link”. The blurb went, Tor an examination of cave art, travel back in time with the professor 2 hill-lion or 20 million years back. Apparently like the multitude interviewed by Robin Leach, Grossman wasn’t too sure about the decimal point