I abhor positivity. But I seem to have found a nice medium between cheerfulness and negativity. Yeah, the we're all going to hell, and there's nothing we can do about it, and humanity is positively depressing, much like the AIDS virus is depressing. I'm the kind of guy who wonders why extending someone's life unnecessarily can be considered a good thing (remember Terri Schiavo?). I laugh at the irony of someone being a "good" person, then learning they're getting stiffed with incurable cancer.

As for complaining? I'm not the complaining type. I'll suffer through a cheeseburger with onions rather than bitching to the person who made it. I mean, I'm going to shit those onions out in a few hours anyway. I'm perfectly content with humankind's (particularly America's) mistaken belief that we're the greatest fucking thing since God said, "Let there be light." Believe what you want, preach what you want--but don't expect me to agree, or to be changed over the course of a few hundred pages. I love to disagree, if only because I can get a quick reaction out of you (usually disgust, sometimes barely-controlled rage). If there's anything we can learn from these books, is that they don't do jack shit for the unconverted.

If Mitch fucking Albom ever publishes another piece of his feel-good drivel, I won't scream or anything. But I'll likely be prompted to sit down and write a manifesto of my own--call it Wednesdays with Brandon--that, I hope, will put a sense of melancholy back into this country. "Hey, kiddo, you're not that important--in fact, the only legacy you'll really leave behind is a tombstone and some unforgivably rotten children."

Have a lovely fucking day.

(And speaking of melancholy: coming soon to a theater near you ...)