Pilfering the Proverbial Headdress

While I do occasionally write in my own blog, I seldom ever get the chance to read other people's. Most of my time is spent undertaking two activities; reading and writing. Right now I am reading the hundred or so in-game stories from The Elder Scrolls series, excited as I am about TES: Skyrim coming out at the end of the year. I made a point of comparing how excited I was with how I would react if Jesus' second coming occurred on 11/11/11, and decided that I would probably hang around at the Second Coming for a few hours before running off to find a copy of Skyrim to play for the next day while civilisation dissolved around me.

So between that and a J. Lennon biography, I'm booked up on the reading side.

Writing, is more complicated. While there are a limited amount of books in the world, there are limitless possibilities for topics and story ideas. After being incorrectly informed that 'jazz' was an onomatopoeia (I spelled it RIGHT!) in the early 20th century, I attempted to make a 'jazz' noise for several minutes and found it to be impossible. Keyboards click, strings twang, drums 'doof' and saxophones 'blah'.
Resorting to Wikipedia, the font of human knowledge, I found that no identifiable etymology exists. Jazz is just jazz until someone invents time travel.

THAT got me thinking about all the things I'd do with a time machine, in numerical order (because chronological order would be way too confusing) and it had me writing for a full day, which when all is said and done will amount to very little because I plan to find a way to stop aging sometime around 2300 AD.

I've also been writing a story about a man who travels through a series of paintings and ends up witnessing the murder of a high priest in an inquisitorial regime which hunts magickers. Wow. Most people will probably understand that synopsis. There's a first.

Erm, where was I? I think the point I was trying to make is that amidst all this AND the terra-forming of a new continent I've actually taken the time to read another blog. You know what? It's nothing like this one!
For one thing, people actually read it and leave little comments every now and then. It has regular posts, jokes, insight into the life of the writer and it's Hilarious with a capital 'haitch'. There are pictures, videos, diagrams and doodads -- and I swear it's given me a case of severe blog envy.

Now I've never considered myself the funniest person. Funny people tend to be popular, and as I am not, I fall into the 'tragically serious' category. Sarcasm and pranks are lost on me as I tend to take things literally and end up feeling hurt or worried about the outcome of the events surrounding the joke. I am, in addition, wildly inappropriate. I once compared refusing prisoners their right to anti-retroviral drugs with death camps during the holocaust -  which in and of itself may have passed, if I hadn't been standing in a room full of Jewish students at King David's High School.

Needless to say, aside from these grave matters of personality are the memories that caused them. I have very few amusing anecdotes from my childhood, and was just short of being followed around everywhere by a string quartet waiting excitedly to eulogise the next tragedy that befell me.
In the face of my comic dejection, and thus, social alienation, I used not other than Wikipedia, from which the inner light of the universe shines, to define 'Humour'. Aside from several interesting comments on Greek fluid philosophies I found this:

"Rowan Atkinson explains in his lecture in the documentary "Funny Business"[14] that an object or a person can become funny in three different ways. They are:

• By behaving in an unusual way
• By being in an unusual place
• By being the wrong size"

I thought to myself, "...Thats perfect I like R.A hes funny that mr bean stuff all makes sense now... but hang on a sec I AM funny nobody else would think of bringing toast to an open band session or showing up at a club with a copy of War & Peace or feel so out of place on Earth that they have declared a long standing war against gravity..."

So finally, after spending my whole life as a reject loser outcast I found out the reason I had done so: I'm just too God damned hilarious. By being the only one to take life 100% seriously I have become the quintessential abstract.


















Think about it. If most people spend their time goofing off by behaving in an unusual way at an unusual place while wearing really tight clothes, then the UNUSUAL behaviour becomes USUAL behaviour for everyone but the slim few serious people who can't get a joke. It's Paulo Coelho's "Veronika Decides to Die" all over again. If madness rules the planet, the mad are sane and the sane are declared mad.
Simply by being my sad and dejected self I am in fact the definition of funny. Oh yes.

The question of what to do with this awesome responsibility is answered by public demand: I am to debase myself for the masses, taking a feather or twelve out of the communal hat and doing something a bit more... bloggy. I'll still have long rants about the structure of the universe and creation and stuff like that, but I'll also include a touch of personal experience in the mix to make you feel welcome on my site. You are. Just keep your coffee mug far away from the keyboard.

Oh, and the blog I'm reading is http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.

Percentiles and the Root of Existence

We devote our lives to many causes, yet only a slim few devote themselves to figuring out why we do so.
As thoughtful creatures, humans are troubled by the question of reason. The interminable 'why' is something standard to those who consider themselves intellectual, scientific persons, shunning the mere existence of empiricism and its basic uses (the patterns in which things are likely to happen rather than the principles in which they may be brought about) in favor of true understanding.

Reason is a bother. It is completely plausible to envy a fool, who has a chance at finding contentment. Questions lead to horrid places. There is a fetid cliche to describe in perfectly: 'Curiosity killed the cat'. If you investigate every aspect of a given article you are bound to have your critical eye scour some fatal flaw - often one outside of your control and utterly irreparable - and then you are forced to live with the knowledge of this flaw for the rest of your existence.

I used to have a rather healthy mindset about the whole matter. I decided to negate the concept of 'mistakes', 'errors' and, indeed, 'flaws'. If something is generated in an act of reason, then it serves a purpose. Even something defective can serve a purpose by being a model others use to establish the necessities of an effective creation. In this the most deformed and crippled components of reality have a reason - and a very important one.

Sometimes, like today and for the past while, I feel like I am one of these defective entities, whose only purpose is to serve as an example to the rest of the world that questioning too deeply has its consequences. I am nineteen years of age, and I am ancient. I am worn out by the conquest of literature I have undertaken, by the menial ins and outs of everyday life that seem so easy to others, and by the crushing weight of expectation that comes with living. I am tired. So very, very tired.
I yearn to be more. What separates something deformed from something whole? I have no answer. I have no spectrum with which to analyse the data that leads to the answer. All I have is my life, and the question of what to do with it.

When one day several years ago I was pondering the differentiating factors between man and machine which would need to be bridged before artificial intelligence could become true intelligence, I found myself questioning the meaning of life. All machines require a meaning of life to function. Toasters produce heat for a given time in order to toast bread. Computers exist in order to organise and display data in a comprehensible form. Fans exist to cool, and radiators to heat.

Organic beings are very different. At our basic levels we appear the same. We have functions such as eating and reproducing, and these may be seen as our purpose. However, a computer's 'life' is not sustained only to draw more electricity into itself or to create back-ups of its programming. If a bridge is linked between these two entities we see that these 'functions' exist to keep them operating - but operating on what?

For machines we tend to assign singular purposes to each individual. An air conditioner, a radio and a motor are all parts of an automobile, but they are separate machines that can each achieve their function separately. Organics, on the other hand, have separate organs that vitally intermingle within a leathery jumpsuit and have augmentative purposes rather than individual ones.

Pre-existing ideas on this subject are numerous. Some believe that our purpose lies in the designs of an unseen Maker, who gives us purpose through ancient riddles and prophetic verse. Our souls are given substance by the morals we uphold and ignore, and eventually culminate in a form we are to spend eternity in. We are asked to conserve the natural state of the earth, and ensure that neither we nor anything else bring it harm. We are asked to keep faithful and obey any wishes our creator chooses to voice.

Or, following a more modern flare, we are given over to ideals. We envision a society that suits our personality, and we pursue it in our own way. Scientists harness the spirit of invention, artists strive to create the Ultimate Work, men of iron and industry battle one another for control over the monetary treasuries of the world. Politicians promote ideas of order and liberty, and some simply choose to exist, taking in the pleasures of emotional connection and physical exhilaration.

I decided after some deliberation that what separates men from machines is a percentile. Machines have one choice; a 100% dedication to a single meaning of life. If they cannot achieve their goals, they either keep trying in futility or they expire. Human beings can choose to give up and try working towards another goal. In a simple format:

Machine: Undergo set task (100%). Minor variations with complex programming.

Human: Undergo basic biological principles: Eating & drinking (7.5%); sleeping (5%), Stabilise environment: social (5%); biological (5%); material (5%), Expand environmental territories: Into the present (2.5%); Into the future (5%), Satisfy religious demands: basic (7.5%); moderate (2.5%); all pervading (0.5%), Master a creative outlet: basic (7.5%); moderate  (5%); all pervading (0.5%), Understand the principles of the universe: basic (7.5%); moderate  (5%); all pervading (0.5%), Achieve emotional satisfaction (12.5%), Reproduce programming: organic (6%) mental (5%)...

The options available to human beings are virtually limitless. The percentages themselves will naturally vary from person to person according to the individual actions Nature & Nurture have pointed them towards. From this I decided on a simple (I'm not kidding this time) expression that underlies human programming:

Perceive, and react accordingly.

And so when I slip into a funk and feel myself ebbing  into a coma, I revert to the prime function for which every human was created, 100%. I perceive new things. I contemplate things that have been, and last, when my sight is no longer clouded by murk and colour returns to my thoughts, I react.
"So many questions are asked in life which have no clear answer that we are soon forced to ask in what order we need answer them."