My Propaganda Would Impress Doctor Goebbels

One of my favorite television shows growing up had to be Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was one of the first shows I watched that featuring long-running story arcs and ensemble cast of characters. The power in the show, however, had to be the consistently top-notch writing and characterization of these 30+ characters. The apex of those characters, in my humble opinion, must be one Elim Garak.

A Cardassian born into the power family of Enabrin Tain, Garak quickly worked up the ranks of Cardassia's intelligence agency - The Obsidian Order.  At a young age he learned the power of the lie and, more importantly, the power of the truth that no one knows. In one of his lunch dates with Doctor Bashir (which were always an arena of lies and deception), when asked why he consistently lies, Garak responds, "Well, the truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination."

Over the years I have taken that quote and made it my own. While not trying to emulate my fictional friend Garak, I do see the methods to his madness. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, but a lie is always more entertaining. At least for directionless automatons such as myself. When presented with even the most simplistic of questions, for example, "what did you do today?", a lie is always infinitely more interesting than the truth.

I have a shit job at a gas station, where I sell cigarettes, beer and gas to the hippies and drunks of Arcata. I've gotten to know the customers somewhat well over the last few months, and with my amazing ability to get along with just about everyone on the planet my customers are no different.

I have seeded myself out in bits and pieces to all my customers wth whom I regularly shoot the shit.  Each one has heard a different story about me. Some I've told the truth to, but most of them I lie to make them feel more comfortable and make me seem like one of their brethren. If you step into my store with jeans, a denim jacket, and a "Member of the Savage Nation" hat I'm going to tell you about my time living in Coos Bay, Oregon, where I worked as a mechanic at a service station. If you're one of the hippies, well, I was born and raised here, and I only got this gas station job because my trimming job fell through. And if you're a hipster, well, I'll probably tell you the truth, except that I love Bright Eyes and Saves The Day.

Today has been the most "real" day with the customers because for the first time I wore my Megadeth - Rust In Peace t-shirt (of which I'm sure I'll write a blog entry on at some point), and to my surprise a good quarter of the customers have started some thrash-related discussion with me, whether it be about the time one of them ran into Marty Friedman in the mall, or how insane the guitar work on Hanger 18 is.

Because genuine enthusiasm is so hard to differentiate from my white lies or even my full blown delusions, nobody REALLY knows me. I'm not saying that in your typical angst-ridden "nobody understands me!" sort of way, I'm saying that because everyone who thinks they know me just knows what I want them to think they know about me. Understand? I don't really care if you do or don't, because anyone reading this probably already knows the REAL me, at least the parts I want them to know about.

So why such a complex web of lies? Well, it's like Garak said, "Lying is like any other skill, and if you want to maintain it at a level of excellence you must practice." It's so maybe when somebody I do care about asks me what I've been doing, I will have a better answer than just, "eh, same old shit." Because, after all, it's always going to be the same old shit.