Category Archives: Philosophy

Eight

November 29, 2006

I find it somewhat comforting when my surroundings remind me that this, all of this, is just a phase. The wild river of life, not unlike the Monsoon Lagoon at Raging Waters, twists and turns as it sees fit. No doubt in a few short years, or weeks or months or even days for that matter, we’ll all find ourselves paddling completely different routes.

Tonight I was reminded how fortunate it is that I am no longer ten years old. No longer do I throw tantrums and shout at my mother and slam doors so hard it ripples the floor upstairs and makes the lights flicker. Me? I don’t really mind listening to the whole act. I actually find it quite entertaining, and what’s more it also grants me a moment’s pause for reflection. I smile at it now, knowing that fifteen years ago nothing I blew up over was critical enough to leave a lasting impression on my life. I chuckle and wonder why the hell I took it all so seriously, when nothing really mattered at all.

Sure, I realize this now, but to be fair I must remind myself that back then, this was my very reality. I commit a historical injustice when I superimpose my current mental state on my ten-year-old self. Back then I was ten, and that’s all I had. All those daily ups and downs, the joys and stresses, they were what constituted my life. Of course I took all that stuff seriously, whether it was the injustice of not getting a Sega Genesis for Christmas, or missing a ride to school in the morning, or being forced to eat hot lunch for an entire year.

Ultimately, what difference did it make? In the long-term, was it really worth gettin’ stressed out and throwing a tantrum over that Genesis? Damn. Even back then, when I saved up and finally bought one with my own money, I ended up selling it a couple months later for a Super Nintendo. Talk about a short romance. Back in 1990, try telling me that in fifteen years the main players in the video game realm would be the company that built my Walkman, and the company that invented DOS. Try telling me that Ninendo would literally own Sega. I would probably call you crazy, and I then I would probably kick you in the shins. Seriously, I was notorious for that in elementary school.

Flux is the natural state of all things. This is both ridiculously obvious and ridiculously easy to forget. Even now, I’m no doubt working myself into a tizzy over things that, in ten years’ time, I’ll simply laugh at upon reflection. The only difference is that this time around I’m aware that my stresses are ridiculous in the greater sense, involving such dumb things as mysterious mold growing on the outside of my flower pots, bleach stains on my bath mat, and misspellings on my LLC registration with the Oregon Secretary of State.

In its own dumb way, the knowledge that these stresses are inconsequential becomes a stress itself, a kind of meta-stress about the lack of relevant stress in my life. Sigh. Perhaps I miss my days of hiking through hailstorms, evading grizzlies, and treating blisters.

Or perhaps there’s just a gaping hole in my heart. Try as I might to distract myself with the banalities of civilized life, I miss those days of driving to Anoka, playing lousy mini-golf, and turning road signs into giant birds that eat people.

I just lost the game.

Also posted in Civilization, Life | Comments Off on Eight

Cryptozoology

October 13, 2006

So.

I had a post here, but as the martini was taking hold I inadvertently closed my browser window. This should be a lesson that the web is not a proper development environment for the discipline of writing, and instead we should write our drafts on something less ephermeral, like composition books or soft clay tablets or coffee mugs.

Thus, this here post is being written in my wholly over-priced and sadly disappointing text editor of choice, which I continue to use because I can’t afford the competition. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself, given the current weakness of the dollar in the global economy.

What is a euro, anyway? As far as I’m concerned, it’s nothing more than a fancy keystroke, an ASCII-equivalent, an extended character in my font library. Either that, or a brilliant attempt by the mindflayers of the European Union to drag Scandinavia down into the dirt with the rest, to try and force them off their noble crowns and kroners and kronas and the whole lot.

Anyway, BBEdit really isn’t all that bad. It just feels… clunky. I mean, I continue to use it because it has really robust RegEx support, but even its search-and-replace dialogue is disappointing. Seriously, hitting the “return” key doesn’t start a new line, but instantly executes my half-baked script? And yet the paltry three-line textareas aren’t resizable? And your HTML toolbar wastes more of my time than it saves? And your automatic code-coloring, in a word, sucks? BBEdit, you’re fucking lucky the Euro is roaming around these days, because it’s the only reason I’m still with you.

That and inertia. Curse you Newton, for inventing both.

I don’t know why, but my mind keeps drifting to trolls. Not the trolls in World of Warcraft, mind you, but the little ugly ones that roam the northern reaches of Minnesota. As I recall, trolls were introduced to Minnesota by the early Scandinavians who settled the area. They smuggled over from the Old World while hiding in liquor barrels and tiny, tiny thatched houses and rotten moss-covered logs that the Scandinavians brought over to remind themselves of their homeland.

These trolls look like they’re made out of wood and grass and nuts and pine needles, and if you ever caught one and brought it to your nose you would say the same for the smell (though some are thought to bathe infrequently and may smell slightly of duff as a result). However, it is important to remember that trolls are indeed made of meat, just like the rest of us, as it would be silly to think that a living thing could be made of anything besides meat. How absurd!

It is said that every time you say “I don’t believe in trolls!” a troll somewhere dies. I find this to be a ridiculous notion, and I demand those who researched the matter to cite their sources. Even for a humanoid species as closely tied to the environment as trolls are, it’s hard to believe that the mere utterance of a few words would have a direct causal relationship with their untimely deaths.

Now, it’s feasible that when the above statement is said it will set into motion a chain of events that inevitably brings about the death of a troll. If that is the case, however, it becomes a question of whether or not the person who said “I don’t believe in trolls!” is morally responsible for the death. I suppose that depends if the person who made the utterance said it with autonomy (in that he or she was not compelled by another to say it), and if the chain of events involved any other autonomous beings that knowingly could have chosen one way or the other to cause a troll’s death.

Genocide or not, I still haven’t figured out if trolls live in the forests of the Northwest. My friend lives across the river in Snowden, and most of his neighbors claim that they have seen sasquatch and aliens… he also adds that his neighbors are the kind of people that have always seen sasquatch or aliens. A few weeks ago there was a creepy event where a number of goats had their udders surgically removed, which as far as I’m concerned neither proves nor disproves the presence of sasquatch, aliens, neighbors, or even goats for that matter.

Trolls, though? I have no idea on that one. Really, no idea. Maybe I’ll find out while camping under the stars for our Pray for Snow party at the base of Mount Hood tomorrow.

Also posted in Outdoors | Comments Off on Cryptozoology