Maybe Not

Would you stand before a lawn-mower and ask it to calculate the diameter of its own wheels? No. You would not. You would not do this simply because the poor, non-sentient landscaping machine would not understand. It cannot understand such a request; therefore, you would stop speaking to it without further cogitative expenditures if you had, for some reason, ever begun.

Would you ask a loaf of bread to pass the salt? No. Why? Same reason. (That, and its rather blatant lack of arms.)

Do we all see the fruitlessnes in explaining to our shoes that we are experiencing a spiritual crisis? Do we comprehend what a waste of breath it is to assure our car that we will fill it up with gasonline, soon?

Yes. We do. This is because we know the nature of these objects and, if not, after one embarrassingly useless conversation with a knitted scarf, most of us learn our lesson.

Acid

Have we done more good things than bad things?

Have we come through times of being worse, or haven't we?

Have we built more or destroyed more?

Have we become better or just smarter?

Have we reached truths or simply grasped the convenient? -- hoarded the obvious?

Have we made beauty that shines or beauty that sits alone like a candle before the blind?

Are we growing toward the sun like trees or spreading in dark places like a cancer?

How can I lean toward the betters of these, when the worst I can imagine gets topped every day; not by select maniacs but by common men with jobs and with shoes -- with sandwiches packed for lunch?

Speak for Yourself

Has anyone else noticed an escalation in the use of "the second person" in common speech? It's starting to get ridiculous.

Usually, I hear it in interviews and I find it really annoying when people tell me what I would do in a given situation. For example, imagine an interview with a person who has escaped the attack of a mad gunman. Instead of :

"When it happened, I couldn't fight back. I was way too scared -- I hid."

...we often get:

"When the time comes, you just react by hiding. You don't think to fight back. All you can think about is getting away."

I don't? How the hell do you know? What a pathetic attempt head-off accusations this is. It's not that the speaker was too frightened to fight back; it is just he experienced what every human would under the same circumstances.

I understand "fight or flight" and the workings of the reptilian brain, but people do sometimes act heroically in these situations. And, by the way, it is perfectly okay if you were too scared to face down an armed maniac. Admit it, without shame, but do not insinuate what I would have done in your place. Neither one of us knows until the situation occurs.

I'll Just Read the List, Thanks

The Oscars are on tonight, you know. I love movies, but I can't watch the ego brigade. I'll just check the interweb tomorrow and see who won what. But I do have a few random movie thoughts for the occasion:

Thank God John Williams is up for two films for "best score," because he is the only real score writer left, since Jerry Goldsmith (god of all film composers) died, may he rest in peace. Howard Shore is okay. Michael Giacchino is the only score-writer who gives me any glimmer of hope for movie music's future. But the days of Goldsmith, Steiner, Hermann and their ilk are over. If I have to hear one more tom-tom-heavy, three-chord, French horn melodied film score, I might gnash my own teeth to dust. I have spoken.

Terry Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian and You

Every day of my life is kind of a pursuit of a wish: the wish that my students will grab some of the wisdom that the great minds of literature have set down for them. The juicy apples just dangle there above them, but I can't do the picking and hand them out. It only works if the kids climb the ladder themselves. I can hold the ladder so it doesn't fall, but ... well, you get the tired metaphor.

In high school, I saw myself in Hamlet. I looked at him and I saw a guy who thinks too much,  but, more importantly, I saw that the definition of thinking too much includes thinking one's way straight through the time when one should have acted. That revelation made a big difference in my life. Many have survived various act fives as a result.