By Jordan Carroll
Loathe me
Chances are I’m not going to be famous. I don’t have any of the makings of a major celebrity, so, being attention-starved, I’ve decided that I’d rather be infamous. Think of it this way: how many times have you seen live, up-to-the-minute coverage of somebody doing a particularly good deed? Do you ever check Yahoo News every five minutes to see how much money someone is donating to starving Japanese orphans? No, never. Since infamy is where it’s at, I’ve decided to work toward scandal, discord, and general unpleasantness. I want a fatwah or a holy crusade, or at least a black mark on my name. I want to see “Jordan” up on the chalkboard with three checkmarks against it. In short, I want to be white-listed.
Now, I haven’t done or said anything particularly awful, and I haven’t “sold anyone out,” but I still think I have many good hatred-inducing qualities. For starts, I’m a white, middle-class, heterosexual male. As such, I fit the profile for most serial killers and most of the oppressive types of the past few centuries. Hating me is a very obvious choice. I have a goatee, which could be interpreted as Stalinesque or even Mephistophelean. My hair is black, a traditional color of evil. I’m left-handed; left, as in “sinister,” as in “left-hand path.” Moreover, I’m hairy, which is an aspect often associated with satyrs and beasts. What more could you want in an infamous personage?
OK, OK, I admit I haven’t done anything particularly malevolent. That’s beside the point; think of all the things I haven’t done. I haven’t saved millions of babies from drowning. I’ve yet to prevent world hunger, war, global warming, or Republican presidency. Even as I type this, my inaction is letting thousands of evildoers run rampant in their respective rampage paths. At the moment, I am the ultimate passive-aggressive archnemesis. Countless men, women, children, and puppies have died because of my inability and apathy. Nobody could top that, and even if they could, they couldn’t be sure, because that number is “countless.”
So, why haven’t I achieved infamy yet? Once I thought I’d done it, but then I realized I had just forgotten to wear a belt that morning. I guess it’s partly because every no-goodnik needs to languish in obscurity for at least a few years of his life. It gives us the appropriate low self-esteem, plus it helps if we have an opportunity to have a few traumatic experiences to fuel our insatiable need for revenge or what have you. Modern monsters need a few sob stories to poignantly flash back to every now and then.
As a villain, I am willing to wear a snappy uniform, slick my hair back, and wear big black electrician’s gloves. I will affect a British accent. I will sneer at do-gooders, goody-two-shoes, and namby-pambies. I will growl at minions provided to me. I won’t destroy the planet with carnivorous robots or Doomsday devices, though. I’ll give the heroes just enough time to save the world, then I’ll say something incisive and clever and disappear in a cloud of smoke. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
So, gentle reader, please, spare a moment of your life to put me on your naughty lists. Refuse to put me in your film because of my nonexistent Communist ties. Don’t publish my works because of their obscene nature. Use my name and the words “unspeakable” or “nefarious” in the same sentence. Whisper a few rumors about me to the easily perturbed villagers. All I ask is that you loathe me.
