ME: (Tries to work)

MY BRAIN: Do you think Ayn Rand ever recognized her essential dichotomy?

ME: ?

MY BRAIN: Just think of it. Hundreds of pages of Atlas Shrugged going to establish that man is not, in fact, just a collection of chemicals, but all her heroes must subjugate every human foible and weakness. They must behave like creatures of pure production, like golems. She moved humans from being a collection of chemicals to a collection of chem.

ME: Whatever.

MY BRAIN: See, “chem” could be a pun that means –

ME: Yes, thank you, I get it.

MY BRAIN: So what do you think?

ME: I don’t care.

MY BRAIN: Aw, come on! I have to think about SOMETHING. I’m bored!

ME: Think about something else. Go back to debating whether misotheism and atheism are the same thing. It was fun listening to you try to figure out whether assigning the characteristic of malevolence to a divine being changed its context.

MY BRAIN: No, I got tired of that.

ME: Well, go do something. I’m busy.

MY BRAIN: Oh, I know! I’ll recite the Preamble to the Constitution —

ME: If you must.

MY BRAIN: — In a Charles Nelson Reilly voice —

ME: Um…

MY BRAIN: — for two hours!

ME: …

MY BRAIN: Rand or Reilly, chum. Take your pick.

ME: How about neither?

MY BRAIN, IN A CHARLES NELSON REILLY VOICE: “We the people, in order to build a more perfect BLANK…”

ME: (Turns Pandora all the way up)

I love Charles Nelson Reilly, and apparently my brain does too.