Saturnalia Update

Salutations friends.  I hope that you have all had a joyous and festive Saturnalia and gave many thanks to the gods of winter.  It is a joyous time for feasting and drunken debauchery, so grab a slave wench and have a grand old time the Roman way.

It has been quite some time since I've been on here (two moon years by standard human temporal evaluation) and I believe you all deserve some sort of an explanation.  You see, there was a storm. It was kind of a big deal.  You may have heard of it.  It was called Sandy and due to my current living situation being situated right in the northward path of that cyclopean cyclone, I was without home or water or power or heat or internet for quite some time.  Each has been restored to me as of the eighth night of Chanukkah, making this year quite the amazing haul as far as gifts are concerned.  In addition, I began a new job and have been trying to adjust and acclimate myself to a new schedule and lifestyle.  Before I knew it, the Mayan apocalypse was upon us and I thought, to hell with it; I'll just wait this out and should we survive, perhaps I'll return to my blog for the new year.

So there it is folks, my long and tiring war against the elements of nature and the repetitive memes of human mass hysteria.  I hope to be fully operational again and destroying planets with my giant laser beam as soon as the the new Star Wars trilogy arrives, but before that, my new year's resolution (the one I'll actually keep) is to return regularly to my blog with more updates from my deranged yet often entertaining piece of brain work.  Or as I call it, Davy.

For the future, I'll work at more Philosophical Fridays, some more In a World Gone Writes, and should my friend and I ever get the time, I have some ideas for vlogs I'd like to make for the site.  For those of you sitting at home who just said, "huzzah, what?" a vlog is a conjugation of "video log" much as a blog is a shortening of "weblog".  You may now all respond with, "ahhhhh."

That is all.  Transmission terminated.

Day 34 - The Terrible Truth About Tiggers

My humblest apple-hoagies, erstwhile travelers of the Internet and other such houses of ill repute. This hath been an unforgiving week of grueling exertion pour moi as I have undergone several changes in my life.

I have been so exhausted and overbusy that it has been impossible to find the time to write up a new Philosophical Friday. Please, I implore of you, seek not your most wrathful rewengi on me, for I am but the messenger to your own thoughts and dreams.

I suppose I could go into some spiel on the nature of time and the teenage existential angst of reality, but tempo non habeo cogere ergo non sum.

I seek to upload what I can and hope to put up a new rant… er, philosophical revelation by Monday. In the meantime, please enjoy the following video of cats doing adorable things, the highest form of Internet entertainment.

In a World Gone Write #2

Researchers at the South Texas University of Previously Inconclusive Discoveries have dredged up another winner:

Three out of four scientists now agree that McDonald's McGriddles breakfast sandwich is the unhealthiest foreign body someone can introduce to their bodies.  The fourth scientist was unable to be reached for comment as he was currently in the ICU dying of a heart attack from eating too many delicious McGriddles.

The title "unhealthiest foreign body" has previously been applied to both heroin and Paris Hilton.

Not to be outdone, even by themselves, McDonald's released in a press conference today their newest sandwich, the McGlutton: a quarter pound beef patty, sausage, and southern fried chicken, served with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and three slices of melted cheese, sitting between two of their large griddle cakes.

McDonald's honorary, imaginary, company spokesman, Mickey Dee, is believed to have said at the conference, "We were hoping to create a sandwich that would kill you before it even reached your stomach.  With over 1500 Calories and large bites, impossible to chew, this monstrosity should stop your heart on its way down your esophagus.

The company, hoping to cash in on the upcoming American election, also unveiled the McRomney chicken sandwich and Obama Mac cheeseburger.  The sandwiches are expected to be released in Europe during the next quarter.  Unfortunately, due to a lack of foresight or geographical concern, both sandwiches are expected to cost the company millions of dollars in revenue which could have been better used solving the current economic crisis.

In a World Gone Write #1

I thought I'd start a new social commentary spoof series.  Welcome to "In a World Gone Write".

Hoping to outlast the recession, certain companies have taken it upon themselves to branch out into other industries.

New from Apple, creators of such high tech products as the iPod^TM and iPhone^TM, comes their latest product, the iCup^TM, intended for use by physicians’ offices and other medical practitioners.  This streamlined containment apparatus comes fully equipped with more than just your standard sterile walls.  Installed with out latest 8-megapixel iSight^TM camera (the same found on the iPhone 5) and Active-When-Wet Facetime app, Apple is proud to let the world know that when you go to the doctor, “I-C-U-P”.

Coming soon to app store, Apple’s mandatory iOS update with built in Penis Size Blackmail app.  Remember, buy our products or else.

Don't Hurt Me... No More

I'm uploading an old rant from Facebook to act as a corollary to the first Philosophy Friday.  This is because a certain girlfriend of a friend of mine (not gonna say who, but you know what you did) thinks that there is someone out there for everyone (there isn't, I did the math) and that you just have to look.  Meet my dating site profile:

Let's face some facts. The dating world sucks. Around 100 years ago, the free, democratic peoples of the world collectively decided to ignore 1 million years of human mating practices and began selecting life partners based on the concept of "love". What a load of horseshit.

And unfortunately for us, we have inherited this flawed system. You see, our parents and grandparents had it easy. Firstly, our grandparents had a bunch of supercool wars to live through which made all of our grandads soldiers and all of our grandmas swoon over their manliness. Our parents, well they had the summer of love, rock & roll, psychadelich drugs, and all sorts of super sexiness. We have Justin Bieber and an internet which is rapidly destroying our social skills through social networking. Also, there are clubs and bars which are most definitely no place to meet the future parent of your children. And if you think it is, well you're a rapidly devolving moron.

Another fact we must face is that you're a liar. It's okay. I'm a liar too. And so is the guy you want to meet. Human nature is to be despicable and to deceive yourself and others. You see, after sighing and swooning over the guy you wish you could meet, when he's staring you in the face, you look past him because, well, he's not really the guy you want to meet. He's no Twilight vampire/werewolf/fruitcake. And when you meet your Cullen, he turns Cú Chulainn and goes blood raving mad on you. And I'm sorry you had to find out this way. Because I know that you're "really trying" to find the right guy.

God Isn't In the Details

Fhtagn, my friends.  Welcome to another edition of Cthulhu Fridays where I take a long, hard look at the madness of the universe and it stares back.  In the last two weeks, I have taken you on a journey into disturbed mind and showed you just how feeble your existence is.  You’re welcome.  I explained my version on the nature of reality and what everything is and exactly why we do it.  It all boils down to life is shit and we’re here to fuck to distract ourselves from how shitty our lives.

But I may have jumped the shark a bit.  After basically giving an overall view of everything, what is left?  Nothing.  Nothing is left for me to talk about.  Can I write an entire essay about nothing?  (Some of you might say I already have.)  What is nothing?  What is the nature of nothingness?  Take it away, Oxford.

Nothing
Pronunciation: /'nʌθɪŋ/ 

pronoun
not anything; no single thing:
adjective
having no prospect of progress; of no value:
adverb
not at all

Nothing is not anything.  Who’d’ve thunk it?  It’s not something.  It’s not everything.  It is nothing.  Nothing is a non-corporeal idea used to fill in the blank space that exists as polar opposite to everything you believe is there.  Anything tangible, if it is, was, or will be, is the antipodal idea running against the void of nothing.  Nothing is an idea.  Ideas are essentially big balls of nothing floating around in your head, screaming to become corporeal objects in real space.  This entire essay was just a stupid idea in my head which I am now translating into reality via a keyboard and a word processor.

So what is the biggest idea in the history of mankind, so hugely, enormously grand that it permeates the popular consciousness across all social classes on earth?  God: it is the biggest, most conceivable long con in the history of the universe.  Every culture on the planet has a god, or gods, or the idea of god, or even the recalcitrant denial that such a being should, would, or could exist.  For the sake of argument and time, I am going to stick with the god I know, the Judeo-Christian behemoth that fought all other gods in some cosmic game show (probably Wheel of Fortune) long ago and won the right to let his followers act like they’re more benevolent than everyone else through slaughter and other acts of violence.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Judeo-Christian deity, here is a quick history.  Some three to four thousand years ago in the land of Canaan (now Israel) on the banks of the Great Sea (now Mediterranean Sea), the various Canaanite tribes were a nomadic and polytheistic group of people.  One tribe, located near modern Jerusalem, were staunch followers of the Canaanite war god, Yaweh.  Being a “war” deity, Yaweh demanded a lot of war and violence and stuff, and the proto-Jerusalemites were happy to oblige.  They conquered the other tribes, vanquished their gods, and gave Yaweh all of their powers until at last, he was the only god, king of kings, lord of the universe, and all that.  It was only later that cosmic irony decided to plant the “City of Peace” right on their home turf.  In order to distance themselves from their vanquished brethren and absolve them of blood, the last of the Canaanites rewrote their history, claiming to have hailed from the far off land of Babylon under the leadership of a man named Abram, likely a tourist who just sort of got caught up in things.  You know, sort of “wrong place, wrong time” and all that jazz.  Thus, Abram and his progeny got blamed for the murder of an entire race and the subsequent destruction of his religion and many more to follow.

After many thousands of years, the God of the Jews has been absconded, metamorphosed, and mutilated, but he’s never quite gotten over that whole “god of war” phase from his pernicious teenage years and those who worship him continued to wage war and shed blood in “his name”.

I have two separate theories on the nature of god.  The first involves quantum physics and a massive amount of tachyons.  The second is a bit more subtle.  As we all know, in a macrocosm, time moves in a liner fashion with causes always preceding effects.  This brings into question two things.  A) What caused the beginning of the universe and B) if god created the universe, what created god?  Can something simply exist in eternity?  I’ve already explained how Yaweh was gradually changed into God, so was there something preceding him?

Gods were concepts that man created long ago to explain natural phenomena that he was not yet scientifically equipped to explain.  Why does the sun rise each day?  Why does it rain?  Why do I get an erection in the morning?  For these answers and more, please consult Ra, Thor, and Aphrodite respectively.  A single God born from a pantheon of gods having amalgamated them into his being should not be able to exist before his conception.  That’s where ideas and nothingness come into play.  Human ideas are extremely powerful things.  They can turn nothing into something, as I previously demonstrated by typing a few words onto a keyboard.  The brain is an electrical apparatus that constructs thoughts by using carefully controlled electron bursts.  Thus, your thoughts actually exist in some fashion on a quantum level.  In quantum physics (and here it gets really technical, so if your nose starts bleeding, please excuse yourself), subatomic particles (such as the electrons in your brain) act outside the normal realm of what we perceive in the macrocosmic world.  Effects can precede or run adjacent to the causes the sparked them.  All cultures have a concept of god and with the popular practice of monotheism in the world, the majority believe or acknowledge the idea that there is a single god or vehemently dispute that same fact, ironically throwing fuel onto the fire simply by acknowledging that such an idea exists.  The collective conscious of humanity essentially constructs God at the dawn of time simply so that the universe will come into existence.  Man creates God in the past so that the universe can begin and man can himself be created.  I’ve never liked that explanation for things because it is far too complicated and postsupposes that we are to blame for creating a faulty product.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote, “Got ist tot.”  Translated into English, this phrase reads, “God is dead.”  Religion was created by man to have a twofold purpose on people’s lives: A) to govern society with a strict moral code and B) to dispel the insecurities people have about death.  Gods, who were already maintaining natural law, got caught up in the whole thing and began overseeing religion as well.  So long as each of us act through our own moral code, follow the rule of law, and laugh in the face of death, as man’s understanding of the world around him becomes clearer, gods will be needed to answer for less and less mysteries.  Man will kill his gods through the power of science and wisdom, relegating them to the stuff of legend and lesser dreams.

However, as the old gods leave us and return to the firmament, what new horrors will fill the void they leave behind?  Ia!  Ia!  Shub Niggurath!

Somebody Once Told Me the World is Gonna Roll Me a Blunt.

I think it was Smashmouth.  I could be mistaken.

Here we are again, my friends, for another Philosophical Friday!  Wait, it's Monday you say?  Sorry, I jumped to the left, stepped to the right, and before I knew it, I got caught in a time warp again.  Oh well, since I'm here anyway, all set to ramble, and five days ahead of, behind, or sideways to schedule, I might as well make some sort of rant.

But what to get all angry on the internet about... hmm... Ah!  I've got it!  In the gross social order of things, here are the gross things people do to themselves in the name of social order!

Tattoos and body piercings, or as I like to call them "standard masochistic bodily mutilation practices" are two of the more popular forms of self-inflicted harm performed by those who have a Johnny Knoxville fetish.  I may be a little bit old fashioned on the idea, but art belongs on canvas so that you view it and gain some insight in the world, not on your lower back, covered halfway up by an article of clothing, only to be revealed when you bend over as what appears to be a strange growth of hair.  

I've been there with friends as they went through the surgical pain of "inking" without localized anesthetic.  Why, oh why would you let someone use a needle to inject poisons just under the epidermal layer of your skin, causing a permanent discoloration to the affected area?  They don't look cool, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, and they continue to look worse with age.  As Robin Williams once put it, you get the barbed wire design, and by the time you turn 70, it's a picket fence.

And speaking of needles piercing skin for no adequately explained reason, body piercings.  Tell me, do you like the thought of someone taking a sharp object and running you through with it?  Hold on.  Let me just go get a spear.  Stand still a moment.  Okay, let me first state that I don't really have a problem with the common earlobe piercing.  Practically every woman in America at least has her earlobes pierced or will eventually.  I still find it to be just another act of self-mutilation, but I've learned to live with that fact that everyone is a borderline psychotic idiot.

My real issue stems from every other piece of flesh man and woman have ever decided to run a metal barb through.  I once met a man who had so many piercings, you ran out of places to cut open, so he pierced his damned wrist.  What the hell is wrong with you?  I can't imagine that this wasn't painful, and if it was, I hope that it was excruciatingly so.  That being said, considering that in the whole of human history, man has sought ways to escape pain, as you have run headfirst into it, please seek psychological help immediately.  Tongue piercing people, in particular.  Tell me.  Did you hate the taste of everything?  Did you always find that there was a missing ball of metal in your mouth?  Were you just annoyed with the fact that you didn't speak with a persistent lisp?  WHY DID YOU DO THIS?!  I need answers like you don't need another hole in your head.

Need to calm my nerves.  I could use a cigarette.  No, mom, I don't smoke.  I'm just using that as a segway to the next item on my agenda.  Yeah, smoker man, you're as stupid as tattoo dude.  I honestly believe the only reason smoking has such staying power in the west is because our civilization wouldn't be here without those little death sticks.  Tabacco is the backbone of American economics and thrived when cotton couldn't cut it.  Perhaps this is because smoking cotton is not nearly as addictive.  Just as a reminder, cigarettes are like instant jaundice.  So if you ever wanted to look like a Simpsons character, take up smoking.  You'll look and sound like Patti and Selma.  If this doesn't sound appealing to you, but you're smoking anyway, I'll be along to collect your lungs.  Trust me, you won't be needing them anymore and they'll thank me for parting them from you.

What other sorts of stupid, revolting things do people do to themselves?  Well, there are mullets, but that's a story for another day.  Have fun at the metal detector, folks.

Life, the Universe, and Everything Else I Don’t Care About

“Life.  Don’t talk to me about life.” –Marvin the Paranoid Android

Welcome one and all (but mostly the one) to another exciting edition of Philosophical Fridays!  Here, I attempt to bring you the big topics of discussion that nobody else is willing to cover because the media is way too self-involved in the irrational and ridiculous.  Who cares who the President will be come January 20^th, 2013?  Whoever it is will just continue to screw up the country anyway.  Besides, the world’s going to end in December.  Just ask the Mayans.  Sorry, they’re dead.

That’s enough politics.  I hate that topic anyway.  (In case you don’t know what politics are, here’s a word breakdown: ‘poli’ from the Greek word for “city” and ‘tics’ from the Greek word for “annoying bloodsucking insect that gives you Lyme disease”.)

For today's topic of dicussion, I would like to talk about that old phrase, life, the universe, and that third one that I oft forget.  Firstly, what is life?  Let's allow those geniuses out in Oxford to give you an incorrect idea:

Life
Pronunciation: /lʌɪf/

1) [mass noun] the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death
2) the existence of an individual human being or animal
3) the period between the birth and death of a living thing, especially a human being
4) vitality, vigour, or energy
5) [mass noun] (in art) the depiction of a subject from a real model, rather than from an artist’s imagination

Well, that was utter crap.  Any definition that uses words to define a word from their same language is automatically biased and is part of what I like to call Heisenberg's uncertain verbiage principle in which by simply speaking a word, you have thus changed its definition to whatever you feel it should be at the moment.  This is the underlying principle to linguistic dynamics and is the cause of such atrocities as the birth of Ebonics from English and the entire country of France.

I’d like to say that life is a big ball of wibbly, wobbly stuff, but that is time, and I don’t want to get my definitions crossed.  I will instead say this: life is that little thing all around you that you accidentally became a part of, back during the halcyon days, when you were an ætherial nothing and decided conception was a good idea.  And you’ve continued apologizing for that momentary lapse of judgment and missed opportunity at foresight ever since.  Sadly, nothing you do will ever be enough to make up for your brief blemish on the history of everything, but you’re welcome to keep on trying.  Life is what gives purpose to attorneys, so shame on you.

Often, one finds one wondering one thing, like how many times one can use one in one sentence.  Other times, one finds oneself questioning the meaning of life.  What is the meaning of life, you might ask, because I have just pushed that thought into your head?  Thanks to the modern miracle of science (fiction) and the long-standing human tradition of the satirical comedy, we now know that the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything is ‘42’.  It has also been surmised that the question, to which 42 is the answer, is ‘what is 9 multiplied by 6?’  It is when you grasp that the answer is 42 and not 54 as you have previously been taught in that inconsequential institution allocated "Earth designation: school" that you can finally come to terms with the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the universe.  It’s at that moment that you finally understand that you will never understand anything, thus creating a paradox; that is the meaning of life.

What does the universe have to do with it all?  Well, it’s sort of the place where it all has to happen, isn’t it?  If there wasn’t a universe, there would be no life, at least not as we know it.  And if there was no life, well, there wouldn’t really be any need for a universe.  Why even have a place for things to happen if you aren’t going to have living being to eventually come along and mess it all up?  Intelligent design at its finest, people: billions of years of evolution just to have intelligent beings rip gaping black holes in the fabric of the cosmos with large hadron colliders (which brings me full circle to point one about not worrying about the upcoming election; December 22nd is coming).

All of this is especially disturbing and mind boggling for the die hard atheist who just read that last bit, sat himself in a corner, and is rocking himself softly to the sounds of his own humming notes.  The universe must serve some purpose because otherwise it wouldn’t have this obsessive need to be observed.  Shit happens, and it can only happen if there is an observable reason for it to happen.  There is no reason for anything to happen in the universe, thus creating a paradox; that is the meaning of the universe.

Everything else is just filler, so make of it what you will.  Personally, I find it all to just be one giant distraction, which is why it all has to be so flashy with the colors, lights, smells, sounds, and those random whirly effects that you sometimes get with fast moving pinwheels.  Certain foods taste sweet not so that we will eat them and perpetuate our own biology, but rather so we will enjoy eating them, providing a distraction to our own biology which is tied directly to our mortality.  Everything is a paradox; that is the meaning of a paradox.

The Great House Falls

I wrote this poem last year for Halloween and am attempting to submit it for poetry compilation book that is being published.

I have come to thee
I sire myself in your great house
Here in the fertile lands of Iteru
The great kingdom Anubia
I will be your conqueror
I will be your doom
Fair of head
Great of height
Tongue of silver
Strong of might
I of many names
I have come to thee
L’rog’g I am
But you shall know me
Nyarlathotep, king of all
Praise me, I come,
The crawling chaos

The book is being published by this Kickstarter campaign so I figured, what the hell.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lestersmith/cthulhu-haiku-and-other-mythos-madness-poems-and-s

"Don't Panic and Carry a Towel"

My all time favorite quote from that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and perhaps my favorite quote of all time.

The universe. Some information to help you live in it.

1: ‘Area’. Infinite. As far as anyone can make out.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word “Infinite.”
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real “wow, that’s big,” time. Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we’re trying to get across here.

2: ‘Imports’.
None. It’s impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.

3: ‘Exports’. None.
See ’Imports’.

4: ‘Rainfall’. None.
Rain cannot fall because in an infinite space there is no up for it to fall down from.

5: ‘Population’. None.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, but that not everyone is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds. So, if every planet in the universe has a population of zero, then the entire population of the universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

6: ‘Monetary Units’. None.
In fact, there are three freely convertible currencies in the universe, but the Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu doesn’t really count as money. It’s exchange rate of six Ningis to one Pu is simple, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six-thousand, eight-hundred miles long each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Niginis are not negotiable currency because the Galactic Banks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this Basic premise it’s very simple to prove that the Galactic Banks are also the products of a deranged imagination.

7: ‘Art’. None.The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn’t a mirror big enough—see point one.

8. ‘Sex’. None.
Well - actually, there is an awful lot of this. Largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, rainfall, or anything else that might keep all the nonexistent people in the universe occupied. However, it’s not worth embarking on a long discussion of it now, because it really is, terribly complicated. For further information See Chapters Seven, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Fourteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Nineteen, Twenty-One to Eighty-Four inclusive, and… most of the rest of the book.

-Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

You wanted it. You needed it. This year's blockbusters from beyond the looking glass.

The movie:

They say on the internet, nobody knows you’re made out of cups.  But T-Pain knows.  This summer (or autumn; we’ve made it autumn now, right?) prepare yourself the thrill ride you never even saw coming.  Action Action.  Laughs Laughs.  Explosions Maybe.  

T-Pain stars in the BIG. GAY. CUP! Cup cup cup...

Coming soon to a theatre in Madagascar, perhaps.


And the sequel:

In a world without any cups, getting a drink of a water is only half the joke.  From the people who brought you the Big Gay Cup comes the sequel they never fully imagined (or even wrote down).  

This holiday season, T-Pain is... the BIG GAY LAUGH.

This time, the joke's on him.  (Well, once again, really.)

Might as well make it a trilogy:

First, he stumbled past the cataclysm of cups.  Then, his laugh inspired millions to quest for the mysterious lolz.  But can even he survive the terror that lurks past the City of Atlantic?  This summer, T-Pain returns and nose-dives cheek first into what may his final adventure ever.

The BIG GAY BRAWL.

Inspired by true events.

What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me.

The question on everyone’s mind… rather on everyone’s mind who reads my blog (all one of you including myself) is what the heck am I going to do with this thing besides send out extremely random and strangely worded messages about nothing in the guise of a genuine story about everything.

On Tuesday, I left a little message promising something planned.  Tuesday is the day dedicated to Mars, Roman god of war.  Ironically, Tuesday is also the most hated day on the calendar, falling squarely after Monday, just to taunt you that the week has just begun, but not yet past Wednesday, the peaceful middle of the week that promises a coming end.  The inverse can be said of Friday, dedicated to Venus, Roman goddess of love.  People love Fridays, and for good reason.  For one, their appetizers are delicious, and for another, it sits at the tail end of the work week, promising for much of the American workforce a sweet relief of two days with nothing much to do but rest and relax.

So my question is “What do you love and why do you love it?”  What makes love such a powerful feature in art and entertainment?  Why are we so damned enthralled by this strange chemical reaction that causes our brains to go loopy and our hearts to flutter with despair?

What do I love, you might ask?  I love knowledge and wisdom, or as the Greeks put it, “philo sophia”.  So welcome, friends, to Philosophical Fridays, where I put on my best show as an amateur philosoph and spill out a bit of my uncouth thoughts on what we do what we do and why we do it.

What better way to start Philosophical Fridays than with a look at Aphrodite and her cupidian companion?  First, allow me to present the Oxford Dictionary definition for love, in case you are confused by the term and have never heard of it before.

Love
Pronunciation: /lʌv/

1) a strong feeling of affection
2) a great interest and pleasure in something
3) [count noun] a person or thing that one loves
4) (in tennis, squash, and some other sports) a score of zero; nil:

It is extremely important to know that last one, should you ever find yourself in the company of an attractive tennis player.  If she starts talking about love, that means you have zero chance at scoring.

Plato outlined several forms of love in his “Symposium”, a glorious romp of sexual innuendo and intrigue set in a typical Greek drinking party.  Prepared within its paltry pages, Plato presents peculiar persuasions of passion.  Try saying that five times fast.  It is also interesting to note some linguistic analysis on love.  The Greeks had two different words for such a thing: Philos and Eros.  Philos (see: philosophy) is a type of dough used in the cooking spinach pie (see: filo dough).  Eros is where our term “erotic” comes from and was also the Greek name for two separate but similar deities equated to the Roman Cupid.  The Latin word for love is Amor, curiously Roma backwards.  Rome’s mythic heritage traces its roots to Trojan hero, Aeneas, son of Aphrodite.  It was Paris’ infatuation with Helen, born of Aphrodite that ultimately destroyed Troy and lead to Rome’s creation.  One could make the argument that Rome and Western Civilization was born from Love, War, and the chaotic affiliation that drives them.  Is it any surprise that the Latin words for war and beauty (bellum) are one and the same?

The Greeks and Romans both had two separate deities for love: Aphrodite/Venus and Eros/Cupid.  Aphrodite, born of the testicles of the old god-king Ouranos as they were plunged into the sea by his son, Kronos, symbolized more general love and beauty.  Eros held sway over the sexually erotic.  Remember, this guy is Cupid, patron god of Valentine’s Day.  So when you wish someone a Happy V-Day, you’re really asking to get laid.

Two of the more fascinating forms of love are the familial and the platonic.  Familial love is sort of a socially mandated appreciation forced on people from the moment they are old enough to cognate a complete thought (which for some could happen at around 34 years old).  You are not expected to like your family, but you need to love them.  The love for your parents is more an imposed respect found right in the good ol’ Bible.  God’s commandment #5: Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.  Even in the ancient times of Biblical insanity (ca. 2012 C.E.) people were harping on about familial respect.  As it is impossible to love something without actually liking it, as love is born from affection, then any person who gives you the sort of spiel about disliking yet loving their family is full of shit.

Platonic love is the kind found between close friends.  When you spend and enjoy time with someone, you eventually develop a bond of mutual affection born out of shared interest.  It is another socially mandated form of love.  Humans are naturally social and develop packs, much like wild dogs.  These packs oft clash with others (see: high school) so a strong bond of trust is necessary to survive such vicious encounters.

The last form of love I will speak of is the one you’ve all been waiting for.  Who the hell cares about bonds of family and friendship?  Let’s talk about sex!  Or romance.  Or something.  I present first a disclaimer:

As someone who has never experience romantic love and has no positive feelings on the subject, I will be attacking this with the emotional maturity of a 25 year old teenager.  “David’s Indefinitive Blog on What Might Happen, Maybe” is not responsible for any ill effects resulting from continued exposure to this blog.  Continued reading may lead to rage, frustration, inability to comprehend basic English, and blindness.  If you are have a weak stomach or a history of heart problems, please turn back or consult your physician before proceeding.  Thank you, and have a horrible day.  (By the way, if “horrible and terrible” are synonyms, and “horror and terror” are synonyms, why are “horrific and terrific” antonyms?)

                                                         

Romance.  “Roman.”  Once again, we turn to those damned Romans for giving us something we really didn’t need and never knew how to use.  <sarcasm>Thank you for the alphabet, Romans.  Like Americans really could figure that shit out.</sarcasm>  (For my older viewers, we call that HTML.)  “C.E.”  I will assume that the tail end of that word means that it was conceived in the Common Era, also known as Anno Domini, so I will also blame this one on Christians.  In fact, it was conceived by the post-Roman Christians.  Romances were French tales of knights, fighting for glory, honor, and most importantly “getting the girl”.  Courtly love and chivalry, the practices of knights at court and at war in wooing women, were the backbone lessons of these tales.  The idea that a man should act in a certain, respectable manner so as to capture fair maiden’s heart was conceived and perpetuated in Arthurian literature.

How does any of that apply to today’s world?  It doesn’t.  It can’t.  I’m not a knight and neither are you.  Acting like one won’t win you the heart of some fair maiden.  Because there is no some fair maiden.  And she certainly doesn’t have a heart.  No, I’m afraid that the days of basic human morality went out the window with the internet.  When the world got connected, we realized how much we truly hate each other and just how depraved and pointless we all really are.  <sarcasm>Thank you Facebook!</sarcasm>

Romance works on a moral level.  You feel infatuation for someone so you act in their interest in the hopes of reciprocation of their infatuation with yourself.  This takes time to accomplish, and the payoff is next to nothing.  In a world where everything must happen instantly and everyone works for the pleasure of themselves, romance is not a viable option.  Instead, humanity returns to its roots, the psychology of self-servitude.  Humans are unique in the animal kingdom, having sex not to further the species or even for mere social interaction, but because it is psychologically pleasing.  All mutations in the evolutionary chain are developed because those who were born with them were benefited by them in the quest to reproduce, thus passing those traits along to their offspring.  That is Darwinian theory at its most basic.  Everything in life is about reproduction and ensuring that your traits survive.  Everything you do in life is about sex.  To act against that fact is to act against your basic humanity and life itself.

I think I’ll stop here for now.  Please join me next Friday where I’ll try to come up with something else to rant about.

Day 9 – Captain’s Blog Supplemental

Exploration Log Entry #2

It has been over one week since I have entered the datascape and settled high in the lofty iCloud layer of the blogosphere.  In the recent week I have been laying low, keeping out of site of internet pirates whom patrol this world in search of any and all scraps of data worth salvaging (or not).

During my days, I have conversed with the natives and have begun to pick up their strange lingo known colloquially and only slightly intelligibly as “leet” or “one thousand three hundred thirty-seven” for short.  It is a strange language, combining both an archaic form of pseudo-English with Arabic quantitative characters, forming barely audible sounds that are not quite numbers and just barely young verbiages fresh off the mouths of newly conceived thoughts.

My nights are spent in different activities, impossible to explain and only recently remembered.  I have finally understood how time works in conjunction with thought, so for those of you who had been infinitely confused with my last posting, worry not.  All future chronal inconsistencies were eradicated and are currently being repaired some time ago.

Today is the day of war.  On the day of love, prepare for something new.

Day 2 – It Bloggles the Mind

Exploration Logbook Entry #1

I leave this record for future generations who find themselves lost on the internet, surrounded by its mountain-high walls of pornography and valleys of creepier pornography.

It has been 24 hours or so now since I found myself trapped in the blogosphere.  Time is funny here so I may not be entirely accurate on that number.  I have witnessed the temporal focus of this, for lack of better word, place accomplish strange feats, including reverse esrever gnidulcni ,staef feats, including reverse, repeat, and even flash forward.  Keeping track of it all using so I just decided up and give up it all was just so confusing so I just decided to give up and keep typing.  If you should find any strange errors in this blog, just chalk it up to oddities located in the time stream.

During the time or the lack of time that I have been here (as I have stated, or will state, the temporal schematics here are, were, and will be confusing) I have attempted to retrace my steps in order that I may find my way out of this place.  So far, I have had no luck.  Once one enters the internet, it is a very difficult place to then exit.

It has come to my attention through interaction with some local bloggers that the blogosphere is meant to accomplish some higher, unseen, and highly convoluted purpose.  This purpose, of which the bloggers themselves appear to be completely ignorant of, is meant to permeate the internet and reach out to the world outside, the world of the users, my world.  If I could find purpose in my blog, perhaps I too could reach out to users and escape this world-wide web.

Ah, screw it.  I'll just write whatever comes to mind and to hell with the users.  This is a blog about nothing, and sometimes my cat.  Or is it?

Day 1 - Trapped in the Blogosphere.

Experiment #42

All previous attempts to interact meaningfully with the internet have met with little success.  Unfortunately, due to an unfortunate accident that unfortuitously has left me using the word unfortunate a lot, I have lost Experiments #s 1-41 in an unfortunate tragic accident involving a time machine and a toaster.  My apologies to the 17th century.  However, enjoy your hot, toasty sandwiches should you ever stop fighting over the Americas long enough to invent electricity or sandwiches.
(Note to self: 17th Century also lacking in copious amounts of internet.)

So why am I here?  That, my friends, is a question best left up to gods and philosophers.  And being that God is dead and philosophers are soon to follow, I think I'll skip that one entirely and just get right down to brass tacks and explain why I am not here.  There, wasn't that simple?

As I was saying, Experiment #42... Experiment #42... ah, yes!  I have opened a blog.  An unfortu... unfor... unforeseen consequence to this action has been that I find myself currently trapped in the latest section of the ever expanding, all-encompassing, not truly existing, but ever-present-in-our-lives monster that is known as cyberspace.  That section, located far above the Facebook Empire that rests over the long forgotten realms of Myspace and Geocities, is the mighty blogosphere.

How did I get here?  That too is a very good question, and one I truly wish I had an answer for.  Experiment #42 ultimately did not leave much time for answers.  Only questions.  Ultimate questions.  The ultimate answers seem to already have been answered.

In conclusion, I welcome you, my friends, to join me, as I try to make sense of my new surroundings, escape the vile obscenity that holds firm over this landscape, right what once went wrong, and hope that each time, my next leap will be the leap home.