Monday, January 13, 2014

Yes, But Who Built It?

So, remember the stories that finally went mainstream about a month ago around the idea that perhaps this universe and everything we know is just one big computer simulation? It occurs to me that this might be a very good explanation of why we’ve never encountered alien life: those who built the Matrix would likely be outside of it looking in.


Of course, that presupposes someone ELSE building the simulation, someone not human. What if we built it ourselves? I think that thought is even more disturbing. But it is also one that lends itself to explaining why our politicians and our powerful are so hell-bent on pissing away all of our resources and laying waste to the planet. If you knew it was all false, that it was all a game, it would definitely change your attitude toward the things the rest of us normally take for granted as “real.”

And if I were a powerful person in possession of some definitive knowledge like that, knowledge that the world and everything in it was just a construct, then I have to assume I would do my damnedest to keep that knowledge secret. Imagine the chaos, the insanity that would be unleashed on the world if everyone suddenly came to find out that we’re all living in a massive lie.

 No, we certainly must keep the plebes struggling and desperate and fearful.

At any rate, this train of thought reminds me of a sort of side point--but one that is incredibly thought-provoking and perhaps alarming--in Chuck Palahniuk’s book “Rant.” In it, a character who is capable of time-travel casually opines something along the lines of this (badly paraphrased): If it were possible to do that, to travel in time, don’t you think the people who have all the money and the power not only know about it, but have already been doing it for a long time?

Similarly, it occurs to me that if the universe and our world is a simulation, then the people who run things, the people who are privy to information most of us can’t even dream of, would be the most likely to know about it. And so look at their behavior: they sure ACT like there is no reason to worry about destroying this world...
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Saturday, January 11, 2014

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Violent Ape/Deadly Ape

This is a piece I started a few months ago and just got around to finishing it. It's pretty bleak. And while I would say it is only reflective of how I feel SOME of the time, I would hasten to add that I in no way disavow these thoughts. Not at all.

Bleakness comes and goes, ebbs and flows, as does my faith in humanity.


MONKEY WITH A GUN

George Zimmerman readying for another night patrol on neighborhood watch.

So, another school shooting.

Another outcry, another call for compassion, another call to keep The Children in our thoughts, along with Those We Have Lost.

Another call for prayers to a god who either chooses not to intervene and is therefore evil, or who is incapable of intervening, and is therefore not omnipotent, and therefore no god at all.

But at least Rush Limbaugh has straightened everything out for us: these things happen because liberals.

Of course.

(Note that there is always the jangle of defensiveness, the blatting of a wrong note, the creeping desperation of the lady protestething too much when people like him clamor to mansplain these things, you notice? A couple of shootings ago, someone was saying it was all because God has been kicked out of the schools, um, somehow. Funny that, when he tells us he’s everywhere...)

I would posit that the answer is even simpler than that, that it goes back further than the Johnson Administration--or even the Jesus Administration: simply put, we are a dumb, violent, brutal species, just as myopic and short-sighted as any other hungry animal on the planet, incapable of thinking coherently for any length of time beyond our own immediate needs. And with our big, stupid brains and our subjugation of the natural world and conquering of death (we like to imagine), we’ve managed to convince ourselves of an entirely new and all-encompassing definition of the word “need.”

As CIA Director Saul Berenson says to his brilliant but impulsive protégé Carrie Matheison on “Homeland,” “You are the smartest and the dumbest fucking person I’ve ever known.”

That is the human race in a nutshell.

Convince us that we are gods incapable of dying--or who SHOULD be--that we are emperors incapable of suffering the slightest inconvenience--or who SHOULD be--that we are kings and queens who deserve everything we can possibly imagine--and then put guns in our hands and watch as we destroy ourselves.

We like to argue that the rapists among us, the shooters among us, the child abusers among us, the animal torturers among us--that these are aberrations, that they are outliers, that they fall far outside the bell curve of normal human behavior.

But at some point folks, we have to admit that there are simply far too many of “them” to consider “us” as something completely separate. Perhaps, a la Occam’s Razor, the answer is far simpler than the reasons we desperately grasp at in the wake of these events: bad upbringing/poor socialization/affluenza/The Media/violent video games/the NRA/the religious/the atheists/the homosexuals/etc etc ad infinitum.

Perhaps we’re just stupid, selfish, inherently violent monkeys whose brains grew too large.



But what about art, you say. What about beauty and love? What about the search for something larger than ourselves? Whither Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Mozart? What about humankind’s higher callings and aspirations? To that I would argue that, yes, fleetingly, a few of us have occasionally shown ourselves capable of rising above our brute, petty needs. But really these examples are quite rare, when you think about it. And on closer examination of the individuals responsible for birthing such beauty into the world, we usually find that they are just as monstrous, just as banally, casually stupid and evil as the rest of us, in their own way. They just happened to stumble upon beauty in addition to the rest of it.

As they say down south, even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then.

Simply put, humans are shitty people.

Individuals have moments when they are not, but if taken honestly and as a whole tapestry, let's face it: the overall picture is bleak.

I’d rather spend my time with a dog. At least they won’t shoot you.
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No. Just, no.

via



Just when you thought adult Americans couldn't get any more cutesy-wutesy in our ongoing regression into childhood.

Introducing the Hoodsie, a hooded onesie for "adults." (note the quotation marks at the top of the video.)



How did I know these idiots would at some point be wearing one of those retarded animal hats?


If you wear one of these and you are over the age of twelve, please kill yourself.

I don't care how many hot models you feature sporting this terrible product, we all know that the people who will end up wearing them will be obese, unwashed Wal-Mart shoppers, like this lovely lady looking spiffy in her terry-cloth, bib-overall style onesie.


Hell, if they made one with a butt-flap, you'd never have to change clothes at all! 

pic via

Friday, January 3, 2014

Snow and Batman Jammies



This dog is happy, methinks. via laughing squid

Some Days...


Some days, human beings break my heart.

It’s nothing out of the ordinary; it’s just the way it hits me. Just all sorts of stupid things I notice sometimes, things that aren’t any different from anything any one of us does on any given day. But watching others fumble through their lives some days, it’s just heartbreaking, I don’t know why. The futility of their efforts, their failed attempts at...everything. The eternal hope and subsequent, inevitable eternal failure is just excruciating sometimes:

Some grumpy kid being dragged behind his clueless parents on an outing that started out fun but isn’t anymore.

Some lonely, heavyset girl eating alone, her long-anticipated meal of a sandwich and a yogurt so much of a letdown even after only a few bites.

Some older lady waiting for a delayed flight in her stupid new boots. You can sense her disappointment in the world reflected in the shiny silver buckles, her disdain for things that don’t turn out her way in the care with which she perches them on her stool’s footrest.

Some days all the sad, crushed high hopes of the ever-hopeful human race are right there, plainly etched in the dead skin of a cow wrapped around some woman’s feet.

Other days, humans fill me full of rage. Our unfathomably stupid, thick-headed bloody-mindedness. Our relentless selfishness. The endless wells of self-deception we lug around with us.

On those days it amazes me we ever survived our trip down out of the trees.
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Happy New Year

I'm back.

Again.

I hope to get back in the habit of posting here at least every other day. I found last spring that it took me away from writing on my plays. Which it does. But I also am finding that I need this outlet too. Hope you'll enjoy.

pic via