A Rain of Frogs

There was this girl last night at the bar. Even from the stage it was easy to see she was pretty. Not “beautiful,” but quite pretty. But she was so…

Desperate.

She was obviously drunk, and groping and making out with guys everywhere.

I felt so bad for her.

She was making offers that were VERY difficult to refuse, yet every guy in the bar did, all put off by the intensity of her desperation yet unwittingly contributing to it.

Thank you.

I would like to take the time right now to thank the discoverers of coffee for making it possible for me to get through Thursdays.

“We’re caught in a trap”

Indeed. Elvis was right, and didn’t figure it out. The result was picturesque, to say the least. The trap, my friends, is the trap of modern society. Not just materialism, but the whole thing.

We start out life not working. Yes, our parents support us, but that’s not the point. Like all living things, we need to work to live. Humans have developed a very interesting method of having other people do work we don’t want to, for which we in turn do work they don’t want to. It’s clever. But here’s what’s happeneing now:

“We can’t walk out”

We get to the point where we get a job. It’s a good job, doing something interesting, and it pays well. So, we buy a car, so we can get to work in style. And now, because we have a car, we can commute, meaning we can buy a house in the ‘burbs instead of living in an apartment downtown. Now we suddenly need that car, and when it breaks down, we pay to rent someone else’s car.

“Because I love you too much baby”

Now we’re feeling a bit down, sort of like we have to keep this job. We have to pay for the car and the house, right? So, in order to make ourselves feel a bit better, we do something our parents used to do. We buy ourselves a toy. A computer, a new cellphone, a big screen television. And the cycle continues. Now you have to work so that your boss can reach you on your cellphone while you’re driving home to your television in that fancy car of yours.

It’s a horrible trap, and it probably doesn’t need to be that way.

A series of unfortunate mindsets

The idea of maybe having less, in material terms, appeals to me on many levels. Recently, while watching H2G2, I was reminded of this. At one point in the film, Arthur is asked by Trillian, whom he’s just met, if he wants to go to Madagascar. He says no, which she questions. His motivation for not going, it appears, is his job. She asks him why he can’t just get another job when he gets back, and it was at that point that I started wondering.

There are people, right now, who live on sailboats. The spend their lives sailing leisurely across the globe, plying the seas and seeing sights that most people will never see, and having experiences that most people can’t even begin to dream about. And they are doing this without the benefit of a job. When they run out of money (a resource they require very little of in the first place) they stop at the next port and pick up an odd job doing something someone else is willing to pay them for, and they do it till they’ve got enough money to continue on their way.

They work to live, instead of living to work.

My god, blogs.

Blogs are the kiss/curse of the Internet right now. Everyone has a blog. There are blogs about cats. Blogs about dogs. Blogs about blogs. There are blogs about how to make blogs, and blogs about how to read blogs.

There are blogs about food, and about culture and about music. There are blogs about sex, blogs about sexuality and blogs about the sexification of blogs.

There are blogs about news and blogs about people’s mundane lives (this one). There are blogs about psychology and physiology and biology. Blogs about feet, for crying out loud.

Does anyone else yearn for something original? Is all creativity in the world now reduced to cleverly copying your neighbour?

I’ve had it. Hypocracy? It’s just a word.

Things to think about: Gin & Tonic, Hula Hoops, the wheel of a skateboard, a manky teddy bear and a shoe that’s not just comfortable, but also attractive.

Though I am nowhere near wise yet, I have come to believe that it is true wisdome to understand that every great man truly does have a great woman standing behind him.

If I look at this from another perspective, I see that this means that in order for a man to be truly great, he requires a great woman behind him. In this situation, I am not implying that this great woman in fact have to be a woman at all, but at least a partner that loves him and is capable of driving him upward to greatness. Nor does the “man” in question have to be male.

I think a person is a mass of potential. A nebulous cloud of potential, that could be shaped into anything. Firmament is the biblical term, potter’s clay is the religious one. A great partner is capable of taking this potential, this firmament, and through love and support, direct and channel that potential into realization, creating a great person from an otherwise unremarkable one.

I think this is the basis of most rises to power. It has been seen time and again, a strong woman working through a man she can both love and support to drive him up the food chain of power till he reaches the pinnacle. Without the lens provided by his partner, he would never have achieved the focus required to rise above the static.

Conversely, she would never achieve the same level of greatness without a man possessing suitable potential. When this becomes truly fascinating is when you start applying this to individuals you know. Look at the dynamic between the lens and the potential, see how it works.

This is a deeply symbiotic relationship, and one of the more interesting aspects of humanity, if you ask me.

Enough of this fluff and crap. Let’s get back into my head. It’s a hell of a lot more interesting, as the traffic logs for this site show.

One of the many curiosities that can be found floating about the labyrinth of my mind is an inexplicable fascination with Björk.

By all means, take your time. I can wait while you pick yourself up off the floor.

Björk, for those not familiar, is an intensely bizarre musician. Her art is experimental and tempermental, and while I am not a fan, it does bear listening to. Once at least.

It’s not her music that fascinates me. It’s her appearance.

Go find a picture of her. Here, or here or here. She has a distinctive appearance.

So distinctive, in fact, that I have trouble deciding if she’s pretty or not. It’s almost like my mind slides off her appearance (like water off a duck’s arse, as the saying goes) whenever I try to figure this out. This by itself is fascinating.

Her ability to drastically alter her appearance, and yet remain distinctively herself is amazing too. Much like her music, her appearance is often experimental and off the beaten path. Of course, this can be said for a lot of other people, like Madonna or Michael Jackson, but one’s an attention whoring freak while the other is a child molester, so it’s not really the same thing.

Given the unusual nature of her appearance, and my complete inability to judge her beauty (or lack thereof), is it any wonder she occupies a larger place in the maze of my mind than one would expect?