Brian is always joking. He's a fat man, a jolly banker, constantly putting on accents and jokes, making fun of blacks, gays, Mexicans, Asians, rich white people, everyone. I don't think he can speak three consecutive sentences without making a joke--usually at someone's expense. The problem, though, is that he's grown so used to joking that the non-joking Brian has completely disappeared--in his place is this constantly ironic voice blabbering away with the understanding always that the "real" Brian doesn't mean these things, that they are just jokes and thus not the opinions of the "true" Brian, wherever this mysterious figure is. The real Brian hardly ever shows up anymore, and I don't think he even exists. My brother told me once about Brian's racist jokes, "He's joking now, but in 20 years he will have become so used to it that he won't be joking anymore--it will just be second nature to him." Brian said to me now, "Everyone--everyone--everyone who's a smoker says, 'Yeah bud, as soon as they cost $5 a pack I'm quitting,' and the price goes up like it did in New York, and people just eat less so they can smoke--it's beautiful, isn't it? Soon it will be considered a public obscenity like indecent exposure, and it will be illegal to smoke anywhere but in a room alone with the curtains pulled and the door shut."