why do people lie?
It's so fucking pointless. It never results in anything good.
I'm watching this show, The Mosquito Coast. It's based on an old novel by Paul Theroux, which i have never read. But i have read every single one of Paul Theroux's travel books. The dude is practically the inspiration behind my love of travel, and my preferred method of travel. I remember i bought his Pillars of Hercules book one day when i was a teenager. I think i thought the title and the cover was cool, and i had this weird compulsion to buy something that day that wasn't science-fiction.
(Almost every novel i have ever read in my life is sci-fi. I'm sure i've written before about the great lengths i went to during my highschool years to navigate the curriculum in such a way that i never had to read anything that wasn't at least tangentially sci-fi. The Diary of Anne Frank might be the only exception, and that, because i went to school in the Netherlands, so, you know.)
Anyway, Paul Theroux is this fabulously cranky travel writer who hates tourists, hates backpackers, hates pretty much everything about traveling except for sitting on uncomfortable buses and cold trains getting drunk with random local people. Which, obviously, is why he is my travel idol. He was Tony Bourdain when Tony Bourdain was still a pimply-faced kid washing dishes in Provincetown. And he didn't kill himself either, so in my books that makes him a better idol for this traveler right here who survived one suicide attempt and has spent the rest of their life trying not to fall back into that pattern.
Of course, at the same time, Paul Theroux is incredibly pretentious. He is a capital-W Writer who writes capital-L Literature and teaches capital-E English and bla bla bla. The best parts of his books are when he rants and raves about how terrible everybody and everything is, while occasionally betraying the love he has for these far-flung places that give him such depth of material for said rants. The worst parts are when he talks about capital-W Writers who wrote capital-L Literature in those places, and fucking wanks on about poetry and prose and all of the stuff that i successfully avoided reading in highschool because of my sneaky reading list wangling that left me only reading sci-fi.
Any fucking way. So Paul Theroux, as well as writing great travel books, wrote a bunch of novels that i'm not sure how they were received, because the only time i have ever heard about them is when he was nominated for a Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which is a silly award given to authors who write very bad sex scenes. And, to be fair, when you read Paul Theroux's travel books, he makes it quite clear that he takes delight in writing very bad fiction for his own entertainment, so perhaps this is some L. Ron Hubbard type situation where people took the silly writing far too seriously.
On the other hand. Some other guys decided to take The Mosquito Coast and make a TV show out of it. (I think there was a movie, but i never saw it, so never mind.) It's now in its second season, and i am only about halfway through.
You guys.
It's brilliant. It is this ridiculous fantasy about a guy who ends up on the run with his family from a Big Bad that you aren't quite sure who it is till much later in the show. There are times that it feels like a retelling of Swiss Family Robinson, and other times it feels like some kind of paranoid (Philip K) Dickian thriller about how the government and organized crime and pretty much everyone is out to get you. It's cynical, it's conspiratorial, but it also hits some deep truths about the reality of life as a hardcore environmental activist, or an off-grid fanatic, or any kind of anti-hero. But, also, it's about an extremely dysfunctional family, with an abusive father, who somehow also loves his family, in a warped way, and... man, it's good.
But to go back to my original point. Almost every moment of drama happens because people lie to each other.
And i notice this again and again, in show after show. It's got to be the number one TV trope because i feel like it doesn't happen so often in books (although i'm sure it does and i forgot because it's been so long since i read a book). People lie to each other and then that fucks everything up. Parents lie to kids. Kids lie to parents. Mom lies to dad. Dad lies to mom. The guy who's supposed to help you is lying to you. You're lying to them. Fucking, the government's lying. The freedom fighters are lying. Everyone is shit. And all these lies keep building up until everything explodes.
Like.
Guys.
Just don't fucking lie to each other. The end. 99% of drama in television is solved. You tell the truth, you suffer the consequence, which almost certainly is going to be far less bad of a consequence than it would've been if you lied and the truth eventually came out anyway. Which it always does. So just fucking tell the truth. Lying is a total waste of everyone's time and energy.
And i think about this in my real life too, where people feel like they need to cover up the truth at work, or from friends or family, try to tell a white lie or whatever. And it never fucking works. It just turns into a disaster, exactly like it always does on TV.
Just be fucking straight with people. It might be tough sometimes, but at least when you're straight the awkwardness happens and then it's over. You never end up with days or months or years of tension because someone suspects something or you thought they knew but they didn't and then it comes out and the fucking subsequent storm of shit, lordy.
Don't lie.
It's stupid.
Anyway. Also, watch The Mosquito Coast. I don't know if the book is any good, but if you enjoy silly, soapy thrillers featuring white people making a total ass of themselves in exotic locations, it's a lot of fun. Just be prepared to yell at the screen a lot. "For chrissakes, just tell the fucking truth! You fools!"
I'm watching this show, The Mosquito Coast. It's based on an old novel by Paul Theroux, which i have never read. But i have read every single one of Paul Theroux's travel books. The dude is practically the inspiration behind my love of travel, and my preferred method of travel. I remember i bought his Pillars of Hercules book one day when i was a teenager. I think i thought the title and the cover was cool, and i had this weird compulsion to buy something that day that wasn't science-fiction.
(Almost every novel i have ever read in my life is sci-fi. I'm sure i've written before about the great lengths i went to during my highschool years to navigate the curriculum in such a way that i never had to read anything that wasn't at least tangentially sci-fi. The Diary of Anne Frank might be the only exception, and that, because i went to school in the Netherlands, so, you know.)
Anyway, Paul Theroux is this fabulously cranky travel writer who hates tourists, hates backpackers, hates pretty much everything about traveling except for sitting on uncomfortable buses and cold trains getting drunk with random local people. Which, obviously, is why he is my travel idol. He was Tony Bourdain when Tony Bourdain was still a pimply-faced kid washing dishes in Provincetown. And he didn't kill himself either, so in my books that makes him a better idol for this traveler right here who survived one suicide attempt and has spent the rest of their life trying not to fall back into that pattern.
Of course, at the same time, Paul Theroux is incredibly pretentious. He is a capital-W Writer who writes capital-L Literature and teaches capital-E English and bla bla bla. The best parts of his books are when he rants and raves about how terrible everybody and everything is, while occasionally betraying the love he has for these far-flung places that give him such depth of material for said rants. The worst parts are when he talks about capital-W Writers who wrote capital-L Literature in those places, and fucking wanks on about poetry and prose and all of the stuff that i successfully avoided reading in highschool because of my sneaky reading list wangling that left me only reading sci-fi.
Any fucking way. So Paul Theroux, as well as writing great travel books, wrote a bunch of novels that i'm not sure how they were received, because the only time i have ever heard about them is when he was nominated for a Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which is a silly award given to authors who write very bad sex scenes. And, to be fair, when you read Paul Theroux's travel books, he makes it quite clear that he takes delight in writing very bad fiction for his own entertainment, so perhaps this is some L. Ron Hubbard type situation where people took the silly writing far too seriously.
On the other hand. Some other guys decided to take The Mosquito Coast and make a TV show out of it. (I think there was a movie, but i never saw it, so never mind.) It's now in its second season, and i am only about halfway through.
You guys.
It's brilliant. It is this ridiculous fantasy about a guy who ends up on the run with his family from a Big Bad that you aren't quite sure who it is till much later in the show. There are times that it feels like a retelling of Swiss Family Robinson, and other times it feels like some kind of paranoid (Philip K) Dickian thriller about how the government and organized crime and pretty much everyone is out to get you. It's cynical, it's conspiratorial, but it also hits some deep truths about the reality of life as a hardcore environmental activist, or an off-grid fanatic, or any kind of anti-hero. But, also, it's about an extremely dysfunctional family, with an abusive father, who somehow also loves his family, in a warped way, and... man, it's good.
But to go back to my original point. Almost every moment of drama happens because people lie to each other.
And i notice this again and again, in show after show. It's got to be the number one TV trope because i feel like it doesn't happen so often in books (although i'm sure it does and i forgot because it's been so long since i read a book). People lie to each other and then that fucks everything up. Parents lie to kids. Kids lie to parents. Mom lies to dad. Dad lies to mom. The guy who's supposed to help you is lying to you. You're lying to them. Fucking, the government's lying. The freedom fighters are lying. Everyone is shit. And all these lies keep building up until everything explodes.
Like.
Guys.
Just don't fucking lie to each other. The end. 99% of drama in television is solved. You tell the truth, you suffer the consequence, which almost certainly is going to be far less bad of a consequence than it would've been if you lied and the truth eventually came out anyway. Which it always does. So just fucking tell the truth. Lying is a total waste of everyone's time and energy.
And i think about this in my real life too, where people feel like they need to cover up the truth at work, or from friends or family, try to tell a white lie or whatever. And it never fucking works. It just turns into a disaster, exactly like it always does on TV.
Just be fucking straight with people. It might be tough sometimes, but at least when you're straight the awkwardness happens and then it's over. You never end up with days or months or years of tension because someone suspects something or you thought they knew but they didn't and then it comes out and the fucking subsequent storm of shit, lordy.
Don't lie.
It's stupid.
Anyway. Also, watch The Mosquito Coast. I don't know if the book is any good, but if you enjoy silly, soapy thrillers featuring white people making a total ass of themselves in exotic locations, it's a lot of fun. Just be prepared to yell at the screen a lot. "For chrissakes, just tell the fucking truth! You fools!"