Sometimes I get scared that I won’t ever be famous. Not because I doubt my unmatched talent, but rather because my talent lies in alienating my audience. In those solemn weeks when I average 10-15 views of my blog per day, I sit staring at my computer screen hoping that my Bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a strong concentration in statistics will help me unravel the mysteries as to why this week is different from last. I check the weather in Minnesota and Maine and New York thinking there might be a correlation to cold weather and higher viewership. I check the stock market hoping that some inverse correlation will lead to me being able to sell my blog to a hedge fund as a financial predicting tool. I check myself before I wreck myself through depressing analysis of why not enough people like me.

My basement room has no windows so I receive no natural light to wake me in the morning and have no ability to gauge what the outside world looks like unless I make the improbable journey out of my apartment. Worse that the constant heat, utter darkness, and complete isolation that comes from my windowless dungeon is the lack of mirror in my room. I have never bought a mirror, but I have always had one. When the fame I so rightfully deserve finally bestows itself upon me I will line my room with mirrors.

My obsession with my reflection is often misinterpreted as vainness, which would be a fair analysis if I was looking at what I looked like. Instead I see the mirror as an opportunity to view a world that is usually only allowed to others – a show that I think brilliant, but that I don’t typically get to watch because I’m too essential to the performance. A mirror is the best entertainment. I like this show because it plays the joke on the audience – like Steve Martin, or STELLA – it says “Why are you watching this? What is wrong with you?” and yet the audience keeps watching. I like this show best when I’m the audience because then I get to be both self-deprecating while making fun of my audience. A win-win.

I’m glad I’m not gay because I would find it hard to stop masturbating.

It would be fun to whine about how people don’t like and respect me for what I do for them – how people are too scared to admit their obsession with me because doing so only proves that I’m right and proving I’m right proves that they are wrong. It would be fun to whine, but in all honesty I get as much praise as I get hatred from Ben. Just all that praise comes from people privately telling me that they liked what I did because they know I won’t publicly display their affections. So, I’m not sad that the praise has to be private while criticism can be public because that only helps me understand that I’m doing things right. Most people preface their compliments with phrases like: “I don’t like to admit that I read your blog,” or “Not that I read your blog every day,” or “I think you are super cool and would like to have sex with you, but don’t want anybody to find out because that would make me look like a loser,” just so that they are relinquished from any responsibility for liking me/my work.

I have thick skin, and thus am the best audience member for myself. My act is centered around making someone self analyze and hate themselves, but since I already do this constantly, mirrors just provide me with a window into the art I feel most comfortable watching.

There is one person who truly does hate what I write. That person is my mother. I don’t know how she lived with me for 18 years. Here are her comments:

“Dad read your blog and told me you hate everything and just sound like you are wining.  I am not going to read it, it would just make me sad.”

When I realize my dreams of fame and fortune I will be wining all the time because wine costs money, and I’m gonna have to flaunt my Benjamins somehow.

Yes, I just made fun of my mother’s inability to spell in her second language – bring on the hate.