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.