Before I start: Check out my new page of old, shitty (but funny) writing I found on my computer.

I think of myself as an optimist. That’s hard to rationalize when you have the attitude and opinions that I have. When you hate everyone and everything  as much as I do, most don’t describe you as a beacon of optimism.

Two of my biggest idols of all time are working together on a movie coming out soon, and in the advent of the film’s release the two sat down together for an interview with New York Magazine. The article inspired some revelations for me.

I’ve always been fascinated with suicide conceptually. Death is simultaniously the thing I look forward to most of all and the thing I am most scared of most of all. I see so much of the world screwing up and therefore feel the need to leave it, but at the same time I have a unquenchable desire to see what terrible things happen next. Those terrible things are usually interesting and they give me a reason to complain. So, in essence, I live to complain.

As Woody Allen said in the article:

“That’s something I get called: pessimistic, nihilistic, cynical … I don’t see it that way. I just have a realistic attitude, and the hard facts are so brutal and terrifying that each person has his own way of rationalizing that it’s not so bad. But it is so bad. And the trick is to acknowledge that, and still get through.”

This rationality is what has led me to be an “artist.” I can’t foresee a future that is not entirely comprised of finding and whining about the horrible shit I see in the world. This is what I consider to be “art.”

As Larry David said in the article:

“I go through life feeling sorry for pretty much everybody. I’ll pass a toll, and I’ll think about the toll collector standing in there for eight or ten hours a day—how do they do it? How do they get up in the morning and go back? I feel sorry for everyone.”

He feels sorry for them because they do not live to complain.

So, how do people like me, Larry David, and Woody Allen get through life without defenestrating ourselves out of guilt and disgust? Narcissism. There is nothing more life-saving than a healthily overinflated ego. We see that there is all this horrible shit going on in the world, and we see that we aren’t the ones doing it. That we are, in our own way, a flickering light in the dark abyss of human existence. If we weren’t to go on living, then that light would disappear and existence would be pure darkness.

So, I thank myself for the little bit of light that I have brought to this horrid world of pure evil. Don’t worry I won’t kill myself or any of you, I need myself to provide light, and I need you to provide the contrast that illustrates the bright light I bring.

There is another Allen that I think belongs in our Jewish boat of disgusted, egomaniacal despair: Lily.

In fact I think this is a great place to end with a list – people who exemplify this egomaniacal inability to fit in society that results in a suicidal fascination that will never result in suicide.

1) Woody Allen

2) Larry David

3) Lily Allen

4) Holden Caulfield (Even as a character)

5) Dorothy Parker (Though she did attempt suicide multiple times)

Hey, I think I have a new jacuzzi for jacuzzi game.