The Roadrunner-Free Diet

If you are reading this you probably understand the relationship between the Roadrunner and the Coyote. If not, how the hell did you get to this blog anyway? I will explain, in any event, for those who are Warner Bros. Impaired. Wile E. Coyote spent the greater part of his existence chasing after the Roadrunner. He occasionally branched out from this pursuit in an attempt to steel fat sheep, but he was always stopped in those pursuits by the presence of a lackadaisical sheepdog named Sam. By and large Wile E. wanted that Roadrunner more than life itself, and he wasn't shy about it. Wile E. was a self proclaimed "Super Genius" and had an extremely high IQ. What made him look stupid, however, was his single-minded pursuance of the Roadrunner. No matter how ingenious his scheme, no matter how unlimited his credit with the ACME Corporation was, he could never corral that little bugger. If one really quantified the amount of resources, both time, effort, and monetary, that Wile E. sank into trying to capture and eat the Roadrunner, the effort would hardly seem worth it. With the time and money he put into acquiring the roadrunner, he could easily have had all of the finest foods in the world flown to his desert. He could have learned to become a master chef himself, becoming the greatest cook that the world has ever known. Bounty lay within his claws wherever he looked.
Yet he had to have this one bird. And what is it about this bird that is so alluring, so fascinating, that it is all that the Coyote hungers for? When one examines the Roadrunner, one does not see a particularly meaty bird. He does not seem juicy or succulent. The Roadrunner is portrayed as one of the fastest beings alive, and its musculature reflects that. The Roadrunner is lean, long, and built for speed. None of those traits suggest that it would make a delicious meal. If anything its meat would be extremely gamy from all of the activity and exercise it gets. All evidence points to the fact that the Roadrunner would not make a very good meal, and actually was quite flawed in this area. Yet and still the Coyote spent all of his energy and resources to catch it. What did Wile E. get for all of this effort?

Pain.

Ceaseless, boundless, unendurable pain. The very universe worked against him. The best laid schemes of Wile E. Coyote oft go awry. Gravity conspired against him and the laws of physics broke themselves to ensure his defeat. Objects float when they shouldn't and fall when they should fly. Fire burns according to it's own whims, and explosions are more explosive than usual. It would be one thing if these environmental accidents were random, but they are very one sided, and very much against Wile E. When the very elements of the universe would conspire against him, you would think that the Coyote would give up, but no, he presses on ever more. He bangs his head quite literally against a mountain, each time hoping for a different outcome while the Roadrunner “meep meeps” and zips away into the distance.
This is quite an accurate description of my love life for the last 22 years. I have spent my life since I was 10 years old, chasing Roadrunners. It wasn't so much that I only chased the girls that I could not have, it was more that I could never have the girls that I wanted. There were plenty of girls that I did not want, and they may have been interested in me, but I didn't know, didn't care. I was always very aware and very decisive about what birds I chased, and did so with great aplomb. Some birds kept my attention for a long time, some for only a day, but no matter what I was always chasing somebody. And the outcome of all of my chasing was very similar to that of the Coyote. I was always falling off of cliffs, crashing into mountains at ridiculously high speeds, or being blow up in any number of inventive ways. Of course I don't mean these things literally. I suffered these injuries as psychic assaults and wounds to my ego from hundreds and thousands of rejections from all of the Roadrunners I spent my life chasing. I first remember a bird catching my eye at the age of 10. I was in 5th grade and there was a 6th grader named Angela who I only saw on the playground. I didn't know why, but I would just stare at her the entire recess period, and I found myself lingering on the 6th graders side of the playground. I never chased her seriously, but she got the taste in my mouth. It wasn't until High School that I was in full Coyote mode. I reasoned that the better the trap the easier I could catch the bird. But instead of bird feed, I used romantic stories, Valentine's gifts, sweet words, sweeter acts, and every “friend-ly” act I had at my disposal to win women. And man could I attract them. I had so many female friends I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't know what to do with them because they wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do to them. I was constantly being diverted into brick walls of “friendship” or “I don't like you that way”. But did I give up? Did Wile E. Coyote ever give up? I bounced from Roadrunner to roadrunner, always chasing, never catching, but taking more and more damage all the time. It was this last point that I didn't understand until much later.
There were two points that I didn't understand until I was around 30. One was that every bird I chased was never as perfect or unique as I thought she was. She was always deeply flawed (like the Roadrunner) for my purposes, and never as unique as I thought she was. In fact, it wasn't until much later in life that I discovered really attractive women were a dime a dozen, and that really great personalities were in much shorter supply. My religious fervor in chasing women blinded me to their flaws, and in that blindness I treated them far better than I should have. That was always my first and biggest mistake. The second point that I realized entirely too late was that all the damage I took from Roadrunner chasing had left me completely bereft of self-esteem, which was in turn making it even harder for me to catch any girls. Very self-defeating cycle that is. By the time I was 27 I was dead, done; I had no self-esteem left and I was desperate. I had no defenses, but the assaults on my psyche kept coming. The boulders that fell on me, to continue the metaphor, got bigger and bigger, even after I held up my pathetic little sign that said “I Surrender”.
I would say the biggest, juiciest, and fastest Roadrunner I ever encountered was, well, I'll call her AZ. AZ was the worst for me because unlike the antagonist of Wile E. Coyote, AZ was just as devious and as much of a Genius as I was. The fact that she was so much like me was why I desired her so much. It is also why I had no chance of catching her. She would set traps for me and I would walk right into them. She wanted a game, I wanted to be caught. To this day I can't really be around her, because she destroys all of my mental defenses.
She was the one I wanted the most but not the most destructive. Lots of birds would fight for that title, Ceresa, Kia, Grace, AV, L and others who thankfully I can't remember now. New ones pop up all the time, each more perfect than the last, but in the end, like our friend the Roadrunner, they are never worth the amount of pain I go through to catch them. That's why I am now on the Roadrunner Free Diet. No more chasing birds for me. I can't have Carbs, refined Sugars, or Roadrunners. I am officially off of the market, for all the reasons seen above. I had an epiphany, recently, that if I took all the money and resources that I put into Acme Corp. and chasing roadrunners, and put it into bettering myself and focusing on school, I would probably be rich and famous by now. I have already seen some positive results from this new philosophy.
So to reiterate; no more rocket packs, no more flying outfits, no more painting tunnels on the sides of mountains, no more bird seed, no more giant magnets, and definitely no more dynamite. I'm sure life will throw some absolutely irresistible birds my way, but I will resist. I will stay focused, because I have bigger birds to fry, so to speak. This doesn't mean that I'm going to start to chase men, it just means that from now on, I have no romantic life. I can live without one, and frankly, having one hasn't ever done me more good than bad. So this is my version of the “Fabulously Single Project”. Let life come at me with whatever, but this Coyote, for once is focused on something other than chasing tail.