You Want Everything To Be Just Like The Stories That You Read But Never Write

I'm back! I had a very selfish month of obsessive, trivial thought patterns of the circular nature. Don't worry, it's over. But out of loyalty to my loving readers and to avoid later re-reading a post two weeks later and loathing myself (ref posts from 2008), I put a moratorium on blog posts until I had something to say for myself. Essentially, I sent myself to my room to think about what I'd done.

This has been a frustratingly long week of post attempts. I open the page every day, jot down a couple keywords for incandescently brilliant discourses that are already half-formed in my head, and then . . . I get onto xkcd.com and spend five hours clicking the "random" button. This is the final proof: it's out there, innocently lurking on a random server, enticing me with guarantees to delight me again and again. My digital kryptonite has been discovered. For someone as low-tech as I generally am, I didn't believe there was a temptation on the webbytubes strong enough to distract me from something so enthralling as this site that is solely commited to continuous minute examinations and sideways praise for myself. But by the sheer volume of links I have shared from that website in the past week, I've had to face the facts. I, too, am a vulnerable, easily impressionable, obsessive compulsive mortal who has an ever growing appetite for little nuggets of wildly nerdy and sarcastic observances.

Sometimes I pity my future children for the influences their parent has been under in her youth, and how that is going to inevitably damage them. Sometimes. Mostly I just think about the ridiculous names I'm going to stick them with just to make sure they're required to develop a personality to pull it off.

So, Canada Day was last Thursday. And I love me some Canadians--my dad's one, many of my favorite relatives hail from there, visiting there has been some of the best times I've had. Alberta could take Quebec any day of the week, by the way. But with that all said and done--and while you'll frequently hear me say that I'm half Canadian in an effort to obtain some distinctiveness--I'm now going to have to trash them.

Not to say that they aren't a nice little country. But when you put Canada up against US for sheer balls-awesome history, US takes them in a single 20 year period. Because the story of the revolt of the colonies under British rule and subsequent successful establishment of themselves as an independent nation? Freakin sweet. I've read an embarrassing number of biographies and historical accounts about the founding; nothing gets me as riled up as North America in the late 18th century. And that's all before you factor in the musical 1776, which aids by adding a snazzy soundtrack to the events surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

And Canada? Not a catchy tune to be found about their gradual and respectful steps towards autonomy from their benevolent and still revered ruler. There just isn't anything very stirring about a series of treaties that released the United Kingdom from the obligation of keeping Canada financially solvent and permitted Canada to take control of it's destiny after it ever so politely and docilely requested it. So, yeah, love western Canada, but USA all the way!

And if any of you humble readers take from this the opportunity to post a snarky, condescending and/or sardonic comment about the founding fathers/US history at large/the despicable naivete of those who get so excited about such a failed nation, I swear I may go Cujo on you. I was speaking in a deliberately histrionic display of my real patriotic feelings because as a political science major I can never ever get away from those who validate their puny, grasping existence by making cutting and belittling remarks about events of the past. I'm not saying that as a citizen you shouldn't be informed of the real history of any time period, quite the opposite, but I do say that I find nothing wrong with taking positive lessons from my history and choosing to emulate admirable moments of imperfect lives. Ok, that's all for the venomous lashout at all past classmates that equated intellectual superiority with how little idealism they personally hold on to.

Do you know what I love? Really fantastic science fiction writers. Like our comrade Isaac Asimov. The singular quality about great sci-fi writers and great sci-fi shows (shout out to Star Trek, word to your mother) is that they take the world, throw it lightyears into the future, and bust the restraints of human potential right open. In the future, nothing is outside of humanity's grasp. Former ethical, social, medical, and technological shortcomings have been tweaked, twiddled with, and resolved into neat little packages. It's such a refreshing outlook on the ever-present-but-forever-in-the-future "what comes next." My friend Grant reminded me of this love of mine by having me read Asimov's essay "The Last Question," and my mind has been cycling around my admiration for the strength of his optimism ever since. I also maintain that it's only the true storytellers, like Asimov, who choose to give ultimate power to Thought instead of a more mundane tactile force.

On Friday I was reminded of yet another long-lost love of mine. It was an incredibly high-stress day at work: everything that could go wrong did, and even though I had my own specific task relatively in hand I was feeling the pressure of every coworker's stressed-to-the-limit auras. Laugh all you want, but put that many panicking individuals in cubicles and try telling me that there isn't an almost visual presence of their collective freak out. So anyways, I'm buckling under the pressure, blood is pumping far too fast and vessels in my eye sockets are bursting under the strain, when I was inspired to add an opera channel to my Pandora station.

Wow, what a moment of clarity. It's an even better match than listening to hard rock when you're in a rage or country when you have a fit of unbearable melodramatic cheesiness. Not only do the vocal expressions in opera emote on a scale no tiny individual could ever achieve alone, the orchestral arrangements sweep whatever messy emotions you've been unsuccessfully dealing with right out of your system. Crisis averted, I typed up my little wires in a bubble of serenity while lovers were betrayed, fathers perished, and villains triumphantly travailed in my headphones.

I'm going to close with this beautiful parody of Forrest Gump. Not because I agree with the sentiment--my world view has far too much bounceability to be so exquisitely cynical--but because it's a quality bit of writing by my close personal friends of the X-files 'verse:

"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck with this indefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there's a peanut butter cup, or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, and if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is an empty box, filled with useless brown paper wrappers."

Tubular.