S2E13: Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment

This one isn't actually about The Simpsons.

As I write, the episode of The Simpsons where Homer steals cable is playing in the background.

For the last week I’ve been on holiday. I’d say it was the first holiday I’ve been on in a long while, but I’m young enough that it hasn’t been so long that life was a holiday. I spent a week in Tasmania. I shucked oysters, sipped wines, and did some reading.

I don’t usually have much time to read. It’s a pastime I strictly reserve for buses, airplanes, and beaches. It’s hard to justify taking the time to read when it could be spent getting my steps up or documenting The Simpsons. And after my working, my walking, and my watching, it’s easier to pick up a bottle than a book...

But I don’t like to drink before bed, so I usually just watch TikToks.

Homer decides to steal cable.

I sometimes struggle to do things in half measures. I can’t just watch The Simpsons. I have to watch The Simpsons every day. I have to write about watching The Simpsons every day. I have to make gifs and format transcript extracts and occasionally read wikis. I have to consider possible multimedia inter-platform cross-pollination (if I do one more season, I’ll start a Tik Tok, one more season, a podcast—re-use old content in new forms). When on holiday, I have to fight the guilt that I’m not doing the thing I said I’d do to 23 pseudo-strangers on the internet.

Paradoxically, the word ‘have’ here means the opposite. For example, when I started reading Gravity’s Rainbow on the flight to Hobart and thought ‘I have to only read this book for the rest of my life’. It’s not enough for me to enjoy a great book, I have to rehearse it, dissect it, and attempt to internalise its greatest. That’s what’s been keeping me out of the big leagues all these years, the fact that I don’t read Gravity’s Rainbow cover to cover repeatedly.

I will never, ever, ever write something even a tenth as good as Gravity’s Rainbow. I will never even write a novel. I struggle to write a blog. I’ve written some borderline incompressible tweets. But I so lavishly lapped up each of Pynchon’s carefully curated morphemes that it reignited something in me, like a man who’s been drinking fireball all night and then suddenly remembers he knows how to drive his car really really fast.

I think I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

Lisa learns that stealing is a sin.

Law seemed like the job writers got if they wanted actually to have a job. And as wholly supportive as my parents were, not having a job wasn’t really an option.

When law didn’t work out, I tried journalism. But writing ‘news’, so formulaic and devoid of my own rare and special insight seemed like a waste. Also, I was very, very bad at it.

Copywriting was the first time I found out you could make money writing, really writing, without being a writer. And consulting was the first time I found out you could make way more money by not doing that.

Through all the words I put to paper: statements of claim, interview transcripts, spray tan safety instructions, and standard operating procedures, here’s the thing I’ve never been able to crack:

Do I like writing? Or do I like being read?

There’s a fine difference.

To write is to create, to entertain, to explain, to share. To contribute a square to the great tapestry. To remember our shared, internal, otherwise silent similarities so that we might all be just slightly less lonely.

To be read is to be seen. To focus not on alleviating the loneliness of the reader, but instead assert that your worldview, your interpretation, has value. To be like a young Stephen King, watching his mother’s face warm as she read the comics he wrote when he was only a child.

I love language, and I love storytelling. I’m reading Dreyer’s English (I decided not to just read Gravity’s Rainbow) and adore the nuance of prescriptive writing, especially when explained by someone as charming as Random Houses’ Benjamin Dryer. And as per the out-of-place anecdote above, I’m reading On Writing by Stephen King.

But I also love attention. The episode of The Simpsons where Homer steals cable ended over an hour ago. It was good.

Review 2.5/5

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Chalkboard Gag: I will not make flatulent noises in class.

Couch Gag: The family does a silly little dance, like Egyptians.