Column Chronicles: Spoilers' alerts - Frank Cotolo on 148.ca

Spoilers' alerts

Frank Cotolo
October 26, 2017

Due to the nature of this particular issue, you are warned that if you read this blog you will find out things you would rather not find out by reading about them. That is a spoiler’s alert and, in plural, spoilers' alerts - there are many to follow.

All right, you have one more chance to stop reading because the next paragraph will reveal things you would rather not find out by reading about them. However, that is my opinion. But if you read further and become pissed that the subject has been spoiled, don't blame me for warning you.

But first, here is a caveat about the various topics that may be spoiled. I may be incorrect about some of them or all of them, so in the long run you may not be spoiled at all because I was wrong. I admit to doing little research on these subjects and going with my gut here and that should compel you to seek other sources before you think I spoiled anything.

The reason for my approach is that I have always been responsible for doing shoddy work. Just because I write and publish something, after all, it doesn't mean I am an expert. Anyone can write anything in a world of free press. No one has to prove their point and they can even lie to try. So don't believe everything you read.

Lots of fact writers lie. Fiction writers always lie. Ernest Hemingway said that being a great writer meant being a great liar. That could be true even though he was a drunk, philanderer and a braggart. Oh, I'm sorry, did I just spoil an Ernest Hemingway biography for you?

Being a spoiler as a journalist, no less a shoddy one, is considered low down. It's like the person who explains how a magician did a trick that astounds an audience every time. People want to believe the trick; people want to believe in magic, so they don't really want to know why a magician's trick fools them. Then, if someone goes ahead and says, "He slipped the bird under his hat when you weren't looking," which gives the trick away, the person who wanted to believe in magic is crushed and a crushed human being can, sometimes, take his or her own life.

This goes to show you that some things should not be explained because spoiling can be deadly. Think of that which makes you feel best about yourself and your life. If someone comes along and tells you the truth about those things, you feel like a fool because you led yourself to believe the lies about that which makes you feel best about yourself and your life.

It's like atheists who deny there is a god and believers who swear there is a god. What if you are one or the other and you believe either or both? That spoils a bunch of things and your life changes, never to be the same again, which is something change does to people, places and things.

Well, it looks like I have run out of space to list the topics I may have spoiled but at least now you know a few things about spoiling, so don't take it all so seriously, okay?

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.