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About the author:
Descended from old English money, Vidicon was raised by spiny echidnas in the mountainous rainforests of the North American Southeast. Lured back to society by time-traveling gray/reptiloid alien hybrids posing as renegade Jesuits, he has managed to maintain his outsider's perspective and an appetite for crunchy insects. Today, Vidicon is a world-class synchronicity surfer and an unlicensed quantum mechanic. He has a fourth-degree black belt in weird.
About his bi-weekly column:
Tales from the Third Lobe are the unfocused meanderings of the World's Smartest Moron. Topics range widely over the sciences, religion, philosophy, technology, modern culture, mysticism, Vidicon's personal history and viewpoints, and whatever pissed him off in the media last week.
View all articles by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. "Vidicon" Xalieri, 2HC Columnist...
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Show Me The WayAfter a whole year filled with devastating tragedies, I'm sure none of us were prepared for the horror to be visited on us upon waking Sunday, January 1st, 2006. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, landslides, drought, assassinations, ongoing armed violence, debilitating poverty, disenfranchisement, and senseless presidential political appointments.... None of these prepared us for the fear and disgust we felt when we saw the news this New Year's Day morning.
At first, as such things do, it took a while to sink in. Some things are just too large to fit in your head in one go. And then it hits like a sledgehammer to the sternum. The headlines, one after another, confirm it: you're still on earth, and you're still not in charge.
And there's nothing you can do to fix it.
There is no one you can bribe. There is no way to just hide for a year and hope 2007 will realize all your dreams. There will be no convenient coma-inducing accident. The secrets of mammalian hibernation still elude us. You'll just have to endure it or die trying: another long year at the bottom of the heap.
Oh, the despair. The world seems to shrink every day, but it seems the pond will never be small enough for you to ever be the biggest fish. Your diet will always consist of worms, grubs, algal scum, and the inevitable hook if you ever try to dine above your station.
Good morning. Happy New Year.
What can you do this year to try to improve your lot just a little bit, you think. Perhaps you can sign on with some minority religion so the government will give you a free leg up. Maybe it's good for business, but you'll be throwing away your political future—unless you can pull off a convincing last-minute Jesus-filled electoral conversion. Risky. In this country minorities are on the bottom for a reason: We, as a population, hate them. Especially in war-time. But hey, at least you'll be able to blame any subsequent failures on The Man.
Hmm. Maybe a few well-chosen resolutions will help! They have to be good for something, right? Why else would they be such a long-standing tradition? Losing strategies are weeded out, evolutionarily speaking....
Come on. You know that's only partly true. It's losers that get weeded out. What works for others is never guaranteed to work for you. Besides, what kind of resolution would you make? Would you resolve to be more charismatic? More quick-witted? More beautiful? More trustworthy-seeming? More on the ball?
Face it. You'd just be resolving to be someone other than who you are, and that trick never works. Remember when Maryanne tried to be Ginger on Gilligan's Island? It will only end in tears.
If you're going to achieve greatness, you're going to have to do it in character. And how likely is that?
Maybe your best bet is notoriety. I mean, even loser criminals can put their hands on a gun.
That's not the route I would take, though. It still takes a fair amount of creativity to not end up just another statistic, either a gunshot fatality while resisting arrest or another overcrowded jail occupant who wasn't hard enough to serve the total length of the assigned sentence.... Certainly not page one material. Truth is, if you were good enough to make your own way as a criminal, you'd only have to work a little harder to make your own way legally. Take this option only if you're a marginal case.
Have I sucked away all your hope yet? If not, let me keep trying. Because that's my job as a bitter cynical bastard who is not about to let you get there ahead of me.
Just kidding. I do intend to wind this up on a positive note. Bitter cynical bastardness notwithstanding.
No, instead let me recommend false serenity and contentment. It's very easy. The only work you have to do is some practicing in front of a mirror. And here's how it works:
Suddenly people just see you differently. Any hardship they see you enduring is obviously part of your plan—a voluntary sacrifice that you've consciously made to put you on the path to whatever it is you want. You're not a slack loser. You're a long-suffering individual who is not afraid to endure a little hardship on the way to your lofty goals. You have a plan.
And then people fall all over themselves to help you out along the way. Stop laughing. I'm not kidding.
See, no one else really has a plan either. They're in total awe of anyone who seems to know what he or she is doing. They want to know how you figured everything out. They want you to owe them favors that you will pay back when you achieve your goals. They want to be near you and learn at your feet.
Will you accept their generosity, even though they're plainly planning to take advantage of you later? Of course, you twit. That's what this is all about.
But when they ask you how you're doing so well, tell them the absolute truth. Seriously. That way, when they get it to work for them, too, they'll be even more grateful. And more generous.
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Vidicon ought to be ashamed of himself. But isn't. |
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