Ephemeral Truculence

Global domination is a rather tedious affair; it requires ruthless strategy, timely alliances, and a ridiculous amount of luck.  I was able to spend Sunday afternoon playing RISK with some good friends of mine.  It’s not that we’re all as geeky as we may at first seem, but it’s a good pass time when winter seems eternal. After the game was put away, I couldn’t help but think about how terrible it is to have applied so much effort into something that means nothing. Ok, so the bragging rights are worth everything… but that’s another story.

Life is just a series of choices followed by a series of consequences. 

I enjoy watching the economy, and I try to make smart financial plays based on the information that is available to me. I find it particularly interesting that there is two completely different schools of thought in regards to investing.  On one side you have technical analysts who are strictly interested in the historic data, and how it can be used to predict what’s going to happen tomorrow.  On the other, you have fundamentalists. They are like little school kids sitting in a circle during story time. They’re looking for positive signs of growth, stability, and always cheer for the hero.  The thing that surprises me the most is that both approaches make both groups of speculators quite a bit of money.

As I was walking through the grocery store parking lot this evening, I suddenly became cognizant of the fact that something was amiss.  Two guys were standing about 50’ to the left of me.  Another guy was walking towards me.  As I was getting nearer, the guy in front of me started staggering pretty severely. He took one final lunge at me, but ended up lying on the pavement, several feet short.   During those few short seconds it became very obvious that he was intoxicated. After he had fallen, his two “friends” started calling to him.  I feel bad for leaving him there, but self preservation won out.

I’m not going to even attempt to wrap up these various thoughts with one conclusive statement. Instead, I just wanted to drive home the point that sometimes things don’t have to make a whole lot of sense logically, in order to work out. Science tells us that falling space debris and genetic mutations are going to destroy humanity. They likely will, but there’s also a survival aspect to the whole thing, and it can never quite be accounted for. It means that my interests are your interests, and that your problems are mine.   You could say that life is a game of chance, or that it’s what you make it, but it's more likely that it's both or neither. 

There is this mentality in N. America that says that you have whatever you work for. Before it’s all over, you’ll invariably discover that everything that you worked so hard for wasn’t really all that important after all. It’s just about as inconsequential as the, nearly forgotten, RISK game.

Eventually all of the pieces will be put back in the box, and I'm perfectly confident that we will see things quite differently then.

  

Effigial Anaglyphs

I’ve been searching for new sources of literary inspiration.  I very much enjoy the ebb + flow effect of free verse, especially when coupled with a smattering of quick wit. I have found a couple of notable authors in recent weeks, but it's not as easy as you might think.

I do like this one though:

the same strings of words cascade from between
your lips every time you open them but
it's because you lock your surreptitiousness
deep down in the back of your throat…. By anobrain

The trick about writing something unique is that you have to think like Cobain and sing off key like Carrabba.

we could plant a house, we could build a tree
in the places that you've come to fear the most.

Yesterday I came across a rather peculiar gallery. After reading two or three pieces, I was beginning to see a pattern of hollowness emerge. The author claims to be a “recovering purging-type anorexic.” 

The theme seems to be more common than I would have ever guessed:

We look for the “truth behind the lies” and the “soul that lives inside.”  We waste our time on creating grand illusions, but the only thing that anyone else ever sees is the monsters in the shadow play.  

Self perception is the most curious of things. It makes you and breaks you; there’s nothing in-between. 

Ochraceous Genuflections

A friend of mine has a little brother who posted a video of himself driving one of his homemade racecars. His Mother secretly began supplementing the “view count.” Several days later he was excitedly telling his sister about all the views that he has got. She decided that the little brother needed a healthy dose of reality. As you might have guessed, he was more than a little bit disappointed to hear that. 

(He’s a smart kid. His genius creations will impress the rest of the world soon enough.)

One of the most popular blogs on the planet… is all about finding the stories behind the story. If you get the chance, check it out: A Grand Unified Theory of Pixar 

                       

 These are some of the reasons for why it has grabbed so much attention:

     -  Most people grow up playing with toys, and most of those people have watched at       least one of the Pixar movies.

    - It’s easier to imagine that everything can work perfectly when it’s being played out in   a fictional world.

    -   We love to see the overarching themes and stories that help to make everything fit     into its place. 

    -  As adults it’s easier to focus on the story when it’s being presented to children           because we have such an  awful habit of convoluting everything else.

Positive attention and affirmation play a crucial role in shaping the way we view ourselves. We’re not all born with good looks and most of us aren’t naturally good at everything. It’s easy to see how saying something to encourage someone else can be incredibly valuable. I’m not saying that it’s right to flatter people needlessly or telling them they’re doing great when they clearly aren’t.

There are millions of workshops and self help books that will tell you to “Just be yourself. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.”  It’s all a load of crap. Certainly there is value in having self-esteem, but what they don’t tell you is that the reason you keep getting back up is because if or when you succeed people will recognize and applaud you for it.

   

It would be nice to think that it works that way, but it doesn’t. People are only interested in other people if they perceive them to be useful to themselves. This is where the Pixar theory gives us a little bit of insight to the human psyche.

Sometimes the things that really matter are far more important than the story that’s being told.  It’s amazing to think that somehow everything fits together, and that your story is my story… and maybe we’re all well on our way to Infinity and Beyond!