Greg’s Last Speech
Ten years ago, when I was just starting out in the world, I thought had ambition, but in truth, I was a dreamer. I had some vague notion of success meaning a big desk in a big building. My plan was to sit there as supplicants were ushered in by my secretary and force them to stare past me at the tank of giant tropical praying mantises, the kind that eat mice. My plan was to stare blankly, not listening to proposals, and then when they were at their most nervous I’d press a button under my desk and release a naked African mole rat into the enclosure for the bugs to eat. I’d sit and pretend not to notice, while the disgusting things tore the other disgusting thing apart, and that that would make me a Big Man. I was going to live in that office, spending my days making strangers feel small, and my nights with a succession of high dollar call girls. That was my impression of success.
I never got that tank, although I did once feed a mouse to some piranhas. Hell, I’ve never even paid more than 30 dollars for sex, and that includes dating. From the point of view of the young man who once dreamed of taking everything possible from the world and going out of his way to give nothing but pain and insolence in return, I’m a complete failure. But fuck him and his opinions, I’m right and he’s stupid, and if he were here today I’d challenge him to a bare-knuckle kickboxing match to prove it!
It’s not important what he thinks now. He’s just a ghost, and we’re alive. You guys, my friends here with me now, are a thousand times more real and more important to me than misguided ambitions of a past self. Your futures mean more to me than my own past, and so I’m willing to forget the past to make sure we have a future. We will rise above this and we will do the one thing which counts as true success, we will Become our future selves!
I heard once that “every day is a lottery and that first prize is going to bed with the same number of arms and legs you woke up with.” Now I realize first prize is waking up. While the mind exists there is more than hope, there is the instantiation of infinite possibility. No matter the challenge, I believe in the capacity of human reason to bring endless solutions into being from the infinite confines of the realm of creativity.
Let us laugh at our despair! Let us rejoice in the opportunity to call each other comrades, and let us combine our mental resources to escape the current adversity in favor of the only kind of future I acknowledge, a glorious future!
I’m open to any and all ideas. Who wants to go first?
(Greg delivers this speech after all living cast members are in a safe house, wanted by the authorities for drug-related crimes, kidnapping, and mayhem.)
