No, I don’t mean secrets (although I’ll take those too.) I’m talking about things that make you go hmm, things that make your brain dizzy. Like this:
Your computer hard drive can contain any song ever recorded, any movie ever made, any software ever written. The bits just need to be arranged in the proper order. That’s all you’re doing when you download/install things, you’re just arranging the bits in the right order.
If lemonade is made of lemons, and grapeade is made of grapes, how come marmalade isn’t made of marmals?
Marmals don’t have enough juice in them.
On that same train of thought, what is Naugahide made from?
According to my religion, I’d be a lot happier if I just let go of my need to have a fixed identity. Nevertheless, I am constantly trying to understand myself, to my own detriment. I would be much more satisfied if I could only let go of the need to live up to my own unreachable ideals for human behavior.
In a slightly related vein, my need to define myself is standing in the way of my art. A friend reminded me the other day the importance of being authentically and unabashedly human, underscoring it with Borges’ short story ‘‘The Circular Ruins.’’ I haven’t written in forever, because I can’t come to terms with my own humanity. Borges, among other writers, is painfully aware of his own mortality and weakness as an artist, and that is one of the things that make him great.
On a more objective note, I remain convinced that there is something really fucked up and unexplainable about the Universe, even if there is no god. I don’t see how ‘‘all life as we know it is due to the sudden rapid expansion of matter at an infinite rate/temperature’’, while true, is even remotely less ‘‘WTF’’ than any theology. Our spontaneous, apparently coincidental creation and subsequent consciousness as a species is never going to make rational sense. I definitely see the appeal of religion. At least it offers the hope of someday understanding the meaning of existence. Science does not offer meaning, only cold, hard facts that make my brain hurt.
I love this. My sentiments exactly.
How much wind could a windbreaker break if a windbreaker could break wind?
I believe the spontaneous thing. Or that we’re part of a Matrix-style simulation. In fact the odds of that are probably better than the odds of there being a God.
What makes my head spin right now?
This cold and headache I have.
Deep enough for you?
Would it be good immigration policy to offer extensive, free English training to documented, legal immigrants?
When you die, 99.99999999% of the population is not going to know, much less care. The world will continue to turn, life will go on. For you, there will no more chances to do all the things you wanted to during this lifetime. Your family will be sad for a while - they will shed tears. Then, Christmas will come and they’ll say, “Boy, X sure liked Christmas,” and they’ll open their presents and watch the game and get ready for New Years. Life will go on and eventually you’ll just be a memory, and eventually you won’t even be a memory - you’ll be a statistic or a note.
As my dad is fond of saying, “The world owes you nothing and outside of your immediate family no one is going to be too torn up that you’re dead.”
Thou must hasten therefore; not only because thou art every day nearer unto death than other, but also because that intellective faculty in thee, whereby thou art enabled to know the true nature of things, and to order all thy actions by that knowledge, doth daily waste and decay: or, may fail thee before thou die.
Life is hard, then you die.
While there are no longer any living vetrans of the Civil War there surely must be a big handful of people that knew civil war vetrans personally when they were 18 years old and the vetran was 73.
Do you know anybody still alive that knew a Civil War vetran?
I haven’t been able to stop long enough to think that deeply in a long while; but, my mom asked me last week, “Why do we call them a pair of pants when it’s only 1?”
Oh heavens, don’t misunderstand me–my bets are on the spontaneous thing too. But where does that leave us? Knowledge without meaning.
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
-Ogden Nash
Or similarly… “Mother Nature is a Bitch.”
I think it was Steven Wright, maybe not, who pointed out how odd it is that “panties” is a plural word, yet “brassiere” is singular, when it should be the other way 'round.
