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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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Elf Shot the Food
So the president of China came over to visit us and decided to visit Bill Gates before George W. Bush. And they say China isn't capitalist. And President Who invites Yale to participate in China's stock market....
...and that got rid of those of you I didn't want to read this. This doesn't necessarily involve politics or economics. I just need people with serious heads to help me figure out what looks to be a frivolous problem.
Convention. Inappropriate suspension of disbelief. Repeating the same old nonsense. That kind of thing.
Say you're playing the old skool version of Gauntlet in the arcade. You've just dropped your thirtieth quarter of the afternoon into the slot and...your vision blurs. There's a ringing in your ears. Your mouth tastes disturbingly of tin. Dizziness, slight nausea, etc. You've just realized that you've sunk the price of a movie into a particle-board and plastic box so you can steer a little green guy around in a maze and ... why does shooting a ham with an arrow make it inedible?
"That was a heroic effort!" drifts past your ears, and your hand drops into your pocket for another quarter and it's in the slot before you can stop it and the next thing you know you've lost another hour and another three dollars.
Trying to make things make sense costs you. It can make you lose. That's just cruel.
Einstein's definition of insanity: Doing the same thing under the same conditions over and over again and expecting different outcomes.
Drop another quarter in the slot. Shoot the food.
It's weird. Sometimes you have to use a crowbar to separate someone from the thingy that's not making any sense, that's sucking away time and money. And later, when you're not looking, they'll go back.
I'm sure you do it too. So do I. That's how I know about the blurred vision and dizziness and nausea and metallic aftertaste that comes with breaking free for a second, the accidental disconnect. Another forkful of the stuff that's no good for you. Another swallow of the liquor that pisses off your ulcer. Another phonecall to the person who knows just how to hurt you.
You step back. You see how bad these things are. You shake your head and stand and quiver for a bit. You sigh.
Drop another quarter in the slot. Forget what you know to be strange and wrong. Make the same old mistakes. On purpose. It's supposed to be fun, maybe. It's what you've seen everyone else do, and nobody else makes anything of it. Shoot the food, curse, and instantly forget the fact that it makes no goddamn sense.
What the hell makes us stop seeing the wrongness?
It's one thing when we're reading fiction or playing some sort of video game, someplace where the impossible is expected to happen on a regular basis. Again and again. If you don't push the nonsense out of your head, you won't enjoy it. Six hours of Gauntlet is more fun than three hours of movie-going experience. To some people. At least it's conceivable.
But why pick up the phone and make that call, or why answer it? Why drive all that distance, why pull out the credit card, why open that door, why pull out the lighter, why pick up the glass, why pick up the knife, why pull pack your fist...
Why does it make us a little sick when we snap out of it? Why does it make us feel better when we drop another fucking quarter in the slot? Is it because staying broken is easier than getting fixed? Is that what that sick feeling is? Touching a nerve? Touching the nerve? The one that let's us know we're basically idiots?
It's my experience that human beings can get used to anything. Even one another. Why can't we get used to that sick feeling we get when we see the truth about ourselves? Answer me that.
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Vidicon shot the food. |
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