OUR CRUSTACEAN OVERLORDS

Approximately 65.5 million years ago, Earth was locked in an epic battle.  Dinosaurs, the native population, were struggling with all they possessed against hostile invaders. This unknown race had hopped over (from, we now guess, one of Neptune’s moons) and landed their mother ships on Earth, setting out to conquer one continent at a time.

The dinosaurs had quickly decided that they could not stand up to the enemy in direct combat,  and had moved to guerilla tactics, a word that would not be invented for millennia.  Using bows, swords, and crude flint-lock rifles, they ambushed the alien race wherever they could, and also stepped on them.

Unfortunately for both parties, a third force was entering the fray, having latched, groupie-like, onto a passing asteroid.  These chitinous, malevolent entities crashed their temporary home into the planet, wiping out the majority of both sides. The dinosaurs, well-used to secrecy, went into hiding, while the few Neptunians who remained were quickly wiped out with freeze rays and cold-fusion bombs.

After waiting out the resulting nuclear winter, the crab people tunneled their huge ships into the crust, using the lava to power their cappuccino machines, and observed the evolution of the planet.  They attempted to institute control over primitive life, but found to their sorrow that, unless directly supervised, these creatures were not intelligent enough to avoid low-hanging tree branches.  So a large number of them packed up and went to go investigate Venus.

To this day we are not certain what happened on Venus, but currently the entire planet is locked in a giant poisonous cloud and there is no visible life. So we can assume that the crab people hijacked the Venusian right wing and started a successful fascist revolution. Or they gave the Venusians reality-TV technology.

When the Venus expedition returned, they found to their delight that intelligent life had arisen. They immediately began manipulating mankind–but were rudely surprised by the dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs, somewhat more intelligent and mostly now possessed of opposable thumbs, had gone before the crab people, walking among men and teaching them many secrets, including an deep-seated horror of all crawly things which has lasted ever since.

The crab people, their ships now embedded in the planet, were unwilling to start the same losing battle as the Neptunians had sixty million years before, and so they quietly and sinisterly sent their agents among the human society, disguised as hobos, madmen, or journalists.

Even now they watch, and wait, seeking for that moment when they can place a crustacean on the world throne, and seize mankind in their greedy, sharp claws.

Or so I hear.

The World As I See It: Age 19.

[So here's the deal.  I've decided that, for as long as I keep this blog up, every year (at some point around Saint Paddy's) I will upload a slice of my take on life. The guidelines that I have absorbed from experiences, from friends, from reading. Here is the first, written at the age of 19, approximately 6 months before I head(ed?) off to college.]

The world is divided into four categories.*

Things that are awesome.

Things that are silly.

Things that suck.

 

Things that are awesome should be cherished, preserved, guarded, and enjoyed with whatever frequency you feel is necessary. Awesome things can include friends, TV shows, pets, memories, web sites, organizations, music, food, and the environment. Parties are awesome.

 

Things that are silly should be nurtured and aided until they become awesome, because if left neglected they will begin to suck. Some silly things can include tasks and chores, which should be done with care and sensitivity to prevent them from sucking. Many government processes are silly. Sadness is also rather silly. Extremism is mostly silly.

 

Things that suck should be combated with everything at your disposal, from machine guns and brave martial coups to offering a hug to the right person at the right time. The degree of your response should scale with the quantity of suck involved, i.e. things that suck a lot require multiple people, whereas things that only kinda suck can be taken care of by one dedicated individual.

 

*: Note that there are only three things listed. This is because the world makes no sense. Things that are awesome can occur randomly and without warning even in the middle of something incredibly sucky. Incredibly, sanity-blastingly awesome things can fall victim to events that suck beyond belief. And, of course, silly things just kind of…happen.

 

Everything is transient. Facebook may crash, taking with it all the little dramas that popped up around it. Countries and ecosystems can topple with little to no warning. Enjoy what is here, while it is, because it may cease to be. Jeez, don’t get all angsty about it, it’s how the world works—the old Celtic circle, a never-ending cycle that feeds in and back through itself.

 

“Sadness” as an emotion is not silly. Mourning is not silly.

But pointless, aimless, redundant, self-destructive angst is self-destructive, aimless, pointless, and redundant. Also silly.

 

Take nothing too seriously. However, if you hurt people’s feelings with your mirth, you are being an ass and should at least try to quiet down about it. No giggling in the funeral.

 

No living entity on this planet has the right to control another, in any way.

 

The most important phrase someone can say is “piss off.” Respect it. NO x 1 = NO.

 

Generally Specific

I don’t like sweeping generalizations. At the risk of sounding like a raving hypocrite, I dislike all sweeping generalizations.

Let me explain why. It’s quite simple, really.

Nothing is constant.

Got it? No? Let’s go in depth. There are a few “constant”, “concrete” things in day-to-day life. The sun comes up. The moon comes up. The clock starts over again at midnight.  Two times two is four, if two geese lay an egg a gosling will come out.

Well.

The sun comes up at a different time and from a different location each morning. The moon rises in a different phase and position than the night before.  The only clocks on earth that are completely and totally correct are broken ones, and they are only right twice a day (once if they mark AM/PM).  Math is a human invention and, thus, prone to random and total reinvention at a moment’s notice. And thanks to evolution, some day two geese will hatch their egg and something not of their species will step out.

But while it annoys me when people generalize about things(“all fast-food places are bad for you.” “TV is not art.” “ranged combat is so gimped in this MMO.”), what really gets me going is generalizing about people.

“All people in the Middle East are Muslims,” for example. Or its cousin, “All Muslim people are terrorists.”  Um, no.

Or, the other direction. “The American right wing is made up of stupid people.” Also demonstrably not true.

Or less political thoughts!  Like “artists are crazy and obsessive.” I have a friend who is convinced that all football players are evil and stupid.  Or the “hipster” movement that has gotten so much flak on the internet, which supposedly rejects anything that is popular.

Obviously, it’s possible to take this too far. I don’t object to people all being classified as the same species. That’s science. It holds true across every demographic.  You want to say that all hydrogen atoms are the same? Great. It can be proved. But if you want to tell me that every movie that Bruce Lee was in was great, or that all “emo” people cut themselves and are borderline sociopaths, well, screenshot or it didn’t happen. Prove it or get out.

And even worse than this laziness, of choosing a position that has not been proven correct, some people then tell me that they don’t care about the subject (football players, pop music, piano’s presence [or lack thereof] in hard rock) enough to go and see if they’re right or not.

HOW CAN YOU NOT CARE? Not only have you just casually condemned an entire demographic/object/art form, you’ve done so with great apathy.  Your intellectual laziness shocks me.

IMHO*, one should keep in mind that nothing is constant. Just because an idea is ‘eco-friendly’ doesn’t mean it is good. Just because a left-wing politician suggested the amendment, doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad. Religion is not inherently evil, and atheists are not hyperrationalistic androids seeking to destroy the world.  Vegetarian diets may not keep you supernaturally healthy, and vegans are not soulless.

Listen. Observe. Make your decisions one at a time, not from some preset list of prejudices that you consult each time action is required.  To generalize a subject is to trivialize it, to reduce it to something that doesn’t require your active attention. And everything should require your attention.

*In My Humble Opinion

P.S.

Hiya again! It’s been a while since I posted. D:  I was distracted. By pretty colors.