Thoughts on and inspired by the motion picture Purple Rain

So I've been sitting here drinking Murky Dismals trying to catch up on the twenty years I've wasted by failing to appreciate Prince, or the artist formerly known as "the artist formerly known as Prince." At a superficial level, it's pretty bad. Of all of Prince's many talents, acting is not one, even when he's playing himself. Actually, the actor who plaid the Kid's father and Morris Day were the only passable players in the whole thing. I actually laughed out loud at the 'Who's on first' routine that M.D. and his lackey [Jerome -Ed.] did with 'What is the password.'
One of the important themes of the film is the tradeoff between artistic integrity and maintaining copax (copaceticity?), between maintaining the purity of one's own vision and making everyone happy or even maintaining the audience's interest. After they plaid Darling Nikki, the club manager yells at the Kid for making his music too personal, and for his being the only one who likes or even understands his work. (Just like his old man, to tie in one of the other big themes.) And I thought Man, this is so me, to manifest the third person of the trinity of themes, that Prince is a self-obsessed jerk like me (but hotter & more talented). This remound me of something that Hillary said the other day about this humble Shanty needing some kind of decryption key. I know I get a little dense and convoluted, so this is maybe not a bad idea.
The main thing is that I like closed, bounded systems. Having too many options incapacitates me; I'm too indecisive to deal with that. For this reason, I partitioned myself into four + 1/2 personae, noms d'e-plume if you will. Ted is the only other alive human at this site. As for the me-lets, their identities I think are fairly clear. Except for Miss Jones (as in Devil in Miss Jones, c.f. Deep Throat w.r.t. conspiracies) who's basically only along for the ride.
Also, I like founding words and verb tenses that seem ought to exist. C.f. 'copax,' 'plaid' for 'played' (by analogy to 'to lay'), and 'remound' for 'reminded.' Despite evidence to the contrary, I am a phenomenally uncreative person. I am really capable only of fleshing out systems laid down by others, and not of creating new ones. A good example is this alleged Todd fellow.
There is no Todd. Doesn't anyone read Sartre any more? I mean, I don't, but I have it on good authority that your Todd is dead, and that no one cares. Todd is an illiterate squirrel about whom a stoned talking cat thinks, "That's Todd. I know Todd." The next day, the strip's alt-text was "Do you know Todd". This is the best euphemism I have ever, so I eloped with it. (We're doing quite well, thank you.) I owe knowing Todd to Achewood, the best comic strip on Earth.
Despite my intellectual handicap, I occasionally do somewhat well with reworking things that others invent. As I mentioned, I work best within clearly delineated boundaries, and other peoples' styles, coupled with having my friends for characters, make respectively very nice canvases and pallette for me.
Now, I realize that I may just have murdered all of my alter egos. Probably not. In any case, I will once again remove my actual, integrated self from this rickety Shanty and resume posting from my two dimensional cardboard subselves. Just to keep things plain and complicated. (I stole that line from Franny and Zoey, by the way.)
-Iain Worthington Goldliebowiczstein Knickerflaps