Gary's Mostly Pointless Blog

Brad and Joe are back this week, but I have to admit that I’m not totally satisfied with this one.  I suppose that I’ll chalk it up to the stresses of NaNoWriMo.

If you’re a NaNoWriMo’er and would like to add me as a friend, or you’d just like to laugh at how far behind I am, feel free to do so by clicking this.  With any luck, I’ll be spending the weekend getting my stuff together and get closer to being on track.

As always with Brad & Joe, it helps to check out the other stories before getting into this one.  I think this is fairly stand alone, but back-story is always fun.  You can find their jackassery here.

Here’s this week’s #FridayFlash, “Bibo Ergo Sum”.

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BIBO ERGO SUM

Brad looked at Joe and shook his head.  Joe nodded in agreement.  They turned their heads back to the television.  The show they were watching was about ants, something that Joe would have normally been interested in.  Joe fidgeted and winced until he couldn’t take it any longer.  He reached for the coat hanger that he had fashioned into a scratching tool and stuck it between his arm and his cast.  Working it back and forth, he finally sighed in relief once the itching had abated.

“When does that thing come off?” Brad asked.

“The doctor said a few more weeks.”

“You didn’t get that Baker guy, did you?  That guy was a dick.”

“No, they said Dr. Baker won’t take my case for some reason.  Someone said something about cleaning up vomit?  Does that sound familiar to you?”

“No.  Maybe they were talking about that guy that threw up all over you at that party.”

“I don’t know.  Anyway, Baker wouldn’t take me.”

“What a dick.”

They sat and watched the TV for a while longer and Brad turned to Joe again and shook his head.

“Hang on,” Joe said, “are you shaking your head for the reason I’m thinking…or about something else?”

“You know what I’m shaking my head about.”

Joe nodded and went back to watching whatever the networks had programmed for Saturday night Television.

“…Because it’s not gonna happen.”

“No, look, I’m with you on this.  I’m not going to try any of those head games or try to sing that song.  Look, one hundred percent, we’re not going out.”

“Oh, I know we’re not.”

They watched a while longer until Brad flipped it off with the remote.

“Why do we do it?” Brad said, still looking at the TV.  “Why do we subject ourselves to hangovers and blackouts and all of the horrible things that come with drinking?  If we weren’t as drunk as we were on Halloween, you never would have fallen down that ditch and broke your arm.”

“Well, on the plus side, I did manage to save those kids from that burning house.”

“I know, but still,” Brad said, standing up and slowly pacing the room.  “Why do we drink so much?  I mean, think of the money we could have saved if we hadn’t spent it all on booze.  All of this just seems so surreal.  We know that we shouldn’t go out, but we usually end up going anyway.  It’s like we’re following some sort of script or like we’re characters in some bad story or something.”

“Well,” Joe said after a brief amount of thought, “how do we know that we aren’t fictional characters?  How do we know that we’re actually real?”

“What?  Of course I’m real, look at this,” Brad said patting his chest, “Hear that?  That’s solid.  Of course I’m real.”

“Yeah…but isn’t that just what a fictional character would say?”

Brad stopped pacing and thought.  “What do you mean?  You think this is “The Matrix” or something?”

“No, just, like…” Joe said, “Ok, hear me out.  How do we know that we’re not, like, figments of somebody else’s imagination?  How do we know that our thoughts and memories aren’t just part of a character biography, or something?”

“Well, that’s easy.  Because…” Brad said and didn’t finish his sentence.  Brad began pacing again.  He fished his keys out of his pocket and began twirling them on his finger.  There were the occasional interspersions of “What if…no…” and “How about…uhh…” but there was mainly silence between them as the thought deeply.

“Ok,” Brad said, “I don’t think that there’s anyway to prove we’re not actually in some Matrix-like environment.”

“Why not?”

“The brain is electrical, right?  Everything we experience is our brain translating electrical impulses into something we can understand, right?  Well, there’s nothing so special about electricity.  It could be imitated.”

“Ok.”

“So there’s no real way to test for that.  I think the real question is what is the nature of reality?” Brad said, as he spun his keys again.

“For the purposes of this discussion, I’d say…sobriety?”

Brad’s face lit up slightly.  “Yeah…ok.  Ok!  Sobriety, good.  We see situations as clear as we can when we’re sober.  That’s a good reason not to go out.”

“But, you can hallucinate if you’re malnourished or sleep deprived.  That’s definitely a departure from reality,” Joe said.

“Yeah…that’s true…”

“If you’re crazy with hunger, the only thing that might make sense to you is eat something poisonous.  That’s definitely not a realistic thing to do.”

“Rrrright.”

Joe stood, inserted the coat hanger into his cast and kept talking.  “Sanity is reality.”

“Yes, but how do we know that we’re sane?  We could be crazy and not know it.”

“That’s true,” Joe said and wiggled the coat hanger around.  “Sanity is a relative thing then, isn’t it?”

Brad nodded, lost in thought.

Joe said, “So, the only way that we know that we’re not as crazy as we could be…is to choose to put ourselves in an insane state…”

“…like being drunk…” Brad finished.

Brad held up his hands and gathered his thoughts.  “To exist within reality,” he said, “or at least to think that you are within the boundaries of accepted reality, is to be sane.  Sanity is relative.  The only way to know that I’m not absolutely crazy, is by choosing to put myself in a less sane state.  The most realistic and economic way to do this is to get drunk.  I drink…therefore…I am.”

They looked at each other, stunned by their collective logical outcome.

Brad whipped a hand toward the door.  “TO THE PUB!”

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