volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

And this is how much his mind is made up—: in order for
him to accomplish his bold, simple plan, he will have to undergo
hazing and humiliation at the hands of his Brother the Asshole.
Not to mention his brother’s gay housemate, Mel.
That is how much his mind is made up.
You might ask yourself why Roy must drag himself through
this mire of self-degradation, just to bake a lasagna?
The answer is simple—: because his brother Rick lives with
Mel, and Mel owns the house they share, and Mel’s house has a
kitchen.
And Mel, from time-to-time, permits Roy the use of his
kitchen.
Rick and Mel are what the ancient Stoics would call difficult
people.
Difficult people are people who behave badly because they
lack a knowledge of good and evil.
For the moderns—more accurately, post-moderns—these
people are commonly referred to as Assholes.
To the Stoic, even difficult people possess a rationality which
is identical to that of the sage—it’s just that their rationality has
not been tutored.
The ancients would have adjudged these people—despite their
propensity towards acts of violence and self-degradation—to be
related to us directly through the divine mind of God.
In post-modern, scientific terms, people become difficult
either as a result of flawed genetic material, or societal forces
beyond their power to avoid. Rationality in such people ceases
to develop, and they become morally blunted. Whelmed and
overwhelmed by violent imagery in the media and designer drugs
on the streets, they regress to a more basic, brutal type—:
Assholes.
As perceived through the connectedness we all share with
God, the sage would have no grounds either for anger or hatred
toward Assholes, no matter how stupid or brazen their behavior.
Roy, not being a sage, would like to throw all the difficult
people he knows—not to mention the ones he hasn’t met—off the
Smith Tower in Seattle and watch them explode on the sidewalk
far below like flame tokay grapes.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY