Dear Amritsar,
When I was two years old, I pulled the tail of the family cat, Rosicrucian Index. I'm not sure what made me do it - I was just improvising, I guess. Well! Old Rosidex' eyes bugged out of its skull like it was in a cartoon, and it howled in surprise. At least, my parents told me it was a howl of surprise.
My parents, Bob and Esther, were videotaping my interactions with the cat. Either they wanted a heartwarming testament to my childhood or they were involved in some bizarre psych experiment that they wanted to write a groundbreaking journal paper about. Or, both. Motivation is not important, here. The important thing is that they put the video on YouTube, where it got 1.347 million views in 24 hours. One point three four seven! In the next two months, my video, "Cat on a Hot Tin Ruth," would go on to be seen over 10 million times.
I was a star!
And, like any child star, I had the problem of how to top a phenomenal success at such a young age. It took a couple of months, but my opportunity arose at my third birthday party. I was being held up by my 92 year-old great-grandma Conssumpcion, when I felt a gurgling in my tummy. I was tempted to spew my curdled bananas and broccoli all over her, but, even then, I had a sense that my audience wasn't into full-on gross-out humour, so, instead, I burped loudly in her face.
"Ruth and Consequences" racked up a respectable 500,000 views on YouTube over the next six months, but respectable was no longer good enough for me. Over the next year and a half, I tried everything I could think of to regain my audience: falling on my face, taking a tablecloth with me and pulling all the plates and glasses on the table down on me; repeating the word "POOP!" over and over again for 36 hours in as many different ways as I could think of; smearing actual poop on the cat (this one was considered "too controversial" and was never aired); all of the artistic tools at the disposal of somebody still in diapers. Nothing was too degrading for me to do to try and find my audience.
But, no matter what I did, my numbers declined drastically.
I tried putting a block of wood with the letter Q painted on the side up my nose, but it barely got 1,000 views. I guess my audience wasn't ready for a conceptual piece. (By the way, the screams on the video were real; I had to be taken to the hospital to get the block removed. If you thought the slow-down-to-get-a-glimpse-of-the accident crowd were interested in watching an artist suffer for her art, well, you can just forget it!)
In the wake of the wooden block fiasco, I decided to take a break from my artistic career. To be honest, eating, pooping and napping - especially napping - took up most of my time and creative attention in any case.
When I returned to the stage a couple of months later, I thought I would give the audience an old favourite: I pulled Rosidex' tail again. Twice. This gave my popularity a bit of a spike, peaking at 10,498 views, but, obviously the time for that act had passed.
Am I washed up at the age of four?
Ruth
Hey, Babe,
You seem awfully media savvy for somebody who is so young. Obviously, the person who said, "They're getting younger every year" didn't know the half of it!
As it happens, I saw "Cat on a Hot Tin Ruth" when it first came out. I remember thinking: Wow. And, we thought television was dumbing down the masses!
You want my honest opinion? The entertainment world already has enough monsters - I'm not about to encourage another one. Do everybody a favour and take up another career, one more appropriate to your age - have you considered walking or language acquisition?
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: you know how you posted a message to saw.you.at.com about that gorgeous person you saw briefly in the cafeteria/strip club/church basement hoping to connect with her or him? Why didn't you just go up to the person and introduce yourself to him or her when you had the chance?