The Sardine's disdain for Stand-Up comedy actually marks a cleansing from his life of all kinds of banal and empty matter endemic to contemporary American society and culture.
Logged-In Public: In plain English, please.
Call it a process of elimination.
L-I P:You're emptying the disdain list?
So to speak.
L-I P:This means that you won't watch the Food Network.
More to the point. The Sardine won't talk about Food.
L-I P:Weren't you a chef for several decades?
Worked on a cooking line. Broiling meats and fish. Not once did food preparation enter the work equation. The core of what the Sardine wants eliminated is never talking about the disdained object or subject. Nothing dulls his senses more than conversation generated by those disdained items. Indeed, eliminating particular types of conversation was the raison d'etre of the disdain list.
L-I P:Disdaining lists, as well?
Ideally, disdaining the disdain list.
L-I P:What the heck do you have to talk about?
Many things.
L-I P:Does any thing ever come off the disdain list?
The hope is for the absolute elimination of the disdained person or entity from the Sardine's consciousness and never to return.
L-I P:Sounds rather a severe way to attain scrap of happiness or contentment.
Actually, happiness, as something for the Sardine to want and attain, has already been eliminated.
L-I P:You don't want to be happy?
Don't want to think about. It's a non-factor.
L-I P:You don't want to make other people happy?
Another, even stronger, non-factor.
L-I P:That's the slacker in you.
The slacker in the Sardine finds the throbbing thyroid of achievement physically and emotionally fatiguing. Too many years of judging his own and others' successes and failures has taken a psychological toll. This young fish once derived great pleasure calling people losers. The world seemed so uncomplicated then.
L-I P:You never had literary or financial success. Like Jefferson refusing to speak to Congress, you shy from challenges.
The Sardine suspects all assertions of pure motives for whatever one does. Especially for himself.
L-I P:What's your beef with Mel Gibson? You won't go to his movies? Do you think Mel should have had his DUI expunged? Is he really anti-Semitic?
That's what's really bothering you. My disdain for your favorite actor. In fact, his movies can be watchable. Just don't want to talk about him. Tom Cruise either.
L-I P:You don't like them because of movie reviewers. Just like them, you are jealous of our heroes' successes.
Another object of disdain. The Sardine doesn't read movie reviews.
L-I P:You resent when they disagree with your opinions.
Worse. There was no relief from reviews of those movies I liked because reviewers got the movies all wrong. Then there's the minimal insight about a film while the reviewer discusses the actors, the director, the budget, and the potential award nominations.
L-I P:The public needs guidance for what it likes and dislikes.
The elimination process never ends. The Sardine refuses to recommend personal favorite choices to friends or to you, the digitalized public. Can't anyone think for themselves?
L-I P:That may have been eliminated from public life long before we became digitalized.
Bob Castle is the unveiled author of A Sardine on Vacation. Check out his bio page.