Hello.
I am the madman living inside @brandt's mind.
Hi! Howdy! Hello!
I'm happy to see you again!
Welcome back to another episode of the show!
Yes, I am the one to blame for @brandt's insanity.
Dude hates my guts, but I can't say I really blame him.
After all, I am the reason he's insane.
He actually tried to murder me once.
But I saw it coming, and I dodged that bullet just in the nick of time.
And now I'm on to him and his messed up games.
This madman's got nine lives, baby!
And @brandt's only got one!
The odds are just absolutely stacked in my favor!
Anyway.
You know how they say a picture is worth 1,000 words?
This one's not:
It's not just a crappy picture, it's also a crappy picture of some of the crappiest mountains in Colorado.
I'd say that picture is worth 500 words, tops.
Maybe 550, if I'm being generous.
Don't get me wrong, @brandt is pretty decent at climbing mountains, and let's give him credit for at least trying to take decent photos.
But don't hold your breath for him ever having any chance in this world at being a photographer.
Where was I going with this.
I can't seem to remember what the point of all that was.
I think I'm losing my mind.
Oh wait!
That's it!
Yes, I remember now!
Words.
I used to write them for a living.
Now that I'm the leader of a cult, though, I don't have to work anymore because I can just take whatever I need from my throng of fiercely loyal followers.
Yeah, it's pretty great!
I highly recommend being the leader of a cult!
The perks are just wild!
Free food, free beer, more money than I know what to do with, sex on demand, and in exchange all I have to do is upload a couple of fiery rants to DTube every week!
I highly recommend it!
If you're interested in starting your own cult, by the way, I've put together a super helpful startup kit for first-time cult founders. It includes my bestselling 200-page e-book "Beginners Guide To Starting Your Own Cult", a DVD containing 2.5 hours of step-by-step video instructions, an untraceable industrial 3D printer, blueprints for 3D printing a wide variety of popular handguns and assault rifles, 100,000m of printer filament, a complete enterprise surveillance system including perimeter detection and license plate scanning, one (1) pack of programmable robowolves, ten (10) ready-to-activate cult members, and at least two (2) dirty cops and two (2) corrupt politicians within a 100-mile radius of your location who owe me a big favor.
You can get all of the above, right now, at an extremely low, extremely limited-time price of ONLY $2 MILLION!
Plus!
If you order in the next 30 minutes, I'll also waive the $999 membership fee I usually charge new members of my own cult, The New Church Of Brandt!
But anyway, yes, it's true.
I was a writer for 10 years.
Well, technically sometimes I was the writer, and other times @brandt was the writer… but together we've got a solid 10 years on our resume.
For an entire decade, we wrote and edited and proofread words for all-American idiots with websites.
I'm exaggerating, of course. Some of the idiots weren't American and didn't have websites.
The first six months of our writing career were awesome. We felt like we were doing something fun and creative for a living. Something that mattered, something privileged and lucky and respectable.
We were one of the early hires at Groupon, before they went public, and back then being able to say you were a Groupon writer was kind of a status symbol in Chicago's comedy scene. It meant you got humor, you knew how to make the copy pop with crazy jokes that came out of nowhere and never left.
But it wasn't long before the honeymoon ended, and we realized that a writing career is actually an abusive, passive-aggressive psychotic control freak that likes to crush young talent,
and burn the ships of inspiration,
and internally abandon quality for the sake of quantity while externally lying about the quantity of value it places on quality.
For the next 9.5 years we were pretty much 100% burned out all the time, and we 100% hated our job all the time.
Do you know what creative burnout feels like?
I could show you what it looks like to other people, but that would mean me literally walking off the stage and quitting early for the night, and that's probably not the best way for me to retain my rapidly dwindling fan base.
I could describe to you what it feels like, but that's where I'd have to use words, and I'm not sure I know how to use words anymore.
I could… I could…
Crap.
Where was I going with this.
I can't seem to remember what the point of all that was.
I think I'm losing my mind.
I could remember what the point of all that was, or I could forget.
I could tell you where I was going with this, or I could tell you I have no idea where I'm going with all this.
I could say something coherent here, but
I think I'm losing my mind!
What is going on!?
I feel like there's something crazy happening inside my head!
I feel like…
I feel like I'm going crazy!!
What in god's name is happening right n—
HEY!!
HEY YOU!!
MADMAN LIVING INSIDE @BRANDT'S MIND!!
I'M TALKING TO YOU, MADMAN!!
Uhh… hello? Hi? What in god's name is h—
SHUT THE FUCK UP!!
I'M THE ONE DOING THE TALKING NOW!!
What?? What are you talking about? Who are y—
SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE!!
YOU DON'T GET TO SAY ANOTHER FUCKING WORD TONIGHT!!
I'M THE MADMAN LIVING INSIDE YOUR MIND, AND THIS EPISODE IS FUCKING OVER!!
But I—
SHUT YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING FACE!! ONE MORE WORD OUTTA YOU AND THIS WHOLE SHOW GOES UP IN FUCKING SMOKE FOREVER!!
…
…
GOOD MADMAN!!
THAT'S A GOOD MADMAN!!
YOU DONE GOOD, MADMAN, YOU DONE REAL REAL GOOD!!
BUT NOW IT'S MY TIME TO SHINE!!
IT'S MY TIME TO CRUSH YOUNG TALENT!!
MY TIME TO BURN THE SHIPS OF INSPIRATION!!
MY TIME TO BURN PEOPLE OUT WITH MY RELENTLESS FOCUS ON QUANTITY OVER QUALITY!!
HELLO, EVERYONE!!
HI!!
HOWDY!!
HELLO!!
I'M THE MADMAN LIVING INSIDE THE MADMAN LIVING INSIDE @BRANDT'S MIND'S MIND!!
AND I'M HAPPY TO SEE YOU AGAIN!!
AND I'M HAPPY TO SAY THAT,
THIS MADMAN'S GOT NINE TIMES NINE LIVES, BABY!!
AND IT'S TIME TO SET THIS FUCKIN' SHOW ON FIRE!!
I would argue that the mountains and picture aren't crappy, but you just don't argue with a madman. Not you of course, you do, but I mean me. I wouldn't argue with your madman, but actually I'm not sure now if it was the madman or you that called them crappy to begin with, so I am not sure where we stand.
'Twas the madman who called my picture and the mountains crappy, not me. He insults me on a pretty regular basis.
But who knows how things are gonna play out now that the 2nd madman has taken the stage.