(no subject)

"Mario'd fallen in love with the first Madame Psychosis programs because
he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow
letters she'd taken out of a shoebox on a rainy P.M., stuff about
heartbreak and people you loved dying and U.S. woe, stuff that was
real. It was increasingly hard to find valid art that was about stuff
that was real in this way. The older Mario gets, the more confused he
gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent
Blott finds stuff that's really real uncomfortable and they get
embarrassed. It's like there's some rule that real stuff can only get
mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't
happy. The worst-feeling thing that happened today was at lunch when
Michael Pemulis told Mario he had an idea for setting up a
Dial-a-Prayer telephone service for atheists in which the atheist dials
the number and the line just rings and rings and no one answers. It was
a joke and a good one, and Mario got it; what was unpleasant was that
Mario was the only one at the big table whose laugh was a happy laugh;
everybody else sort of looked down like they were laughing at somebody
with a disability."

--david foster wallace,  infinite jest