More random stuff from my Internet peregrinations, which I have nicknamed “foobles” in a move I hope you will find charmingly eccentric and whimsical, as opposed to, say, frighteningly imbalanced and certifiable.

First up, a comic some person put together on a subject near and dear to my heart : Disney’s The Lion King.

Click the picture to see it full sized and readable!

Sadly, it is also about the heartbreak of childhood disillusionment, which is why, in my mind, I have labeled this comic “The Truth About Lions”.

That’s just how lions are, kid. Most lion prides are a single family group, all related, and they don’t exactly have an Africa-wide dating network in order to meet up with other lion prides and trade genetic information, if ya know what I mean.

So a single rogue male might entice a lioness out of an existing pride and found a pride with her, and when his female offspring come of age…. well, it’s him, or her brothers, and you know what?

Lions just don’t give a shit.

And if his daughters have daughter, he will jungle bang them too, when they come of age. And so forth and so on, until he’s an old mangy elder who doesn’t get real excited by anything any more, and one of his sons had taken over the pride and harem.

Of course, the real explanation, if you want to be wanky about it, is that, if you watch the Lion King closely, you will see that it is at least implied that there are a lot more lionesses than the two in the comic. They are just never named.

But honestly, realistically?

Lions just don’t give a shit.

Next up, a video that makes for perfect Internet fodder, in that it is relatively short, has a lot of entertainment value, and is awesome.

When I first watched it, I didn’t get why the reporter didn’t react to having made a spectacular over the shoulder half-court basket, and his expression was so strange that I wondered if something else was happening to him. Something bad.

But then I figured it out : he has no idea he scored the basket, and that weird expression is actually him looking at his crew and wondering what the hell they are freaking out about. So in reality, it’s him that is thinking something weird is going on.

That, to me, makes the clip all the more charming on repeated viewings.

And of course, being a guy, his immediate reaction when learning he just did something very awesome in front of a camera is “Did you get that?”.

I would be enjoying the glory of that for days and days! And I don’t even give a shit about sports. But come on! That was killer awesome.

I think it is important, in life, to enjoy what good fortune comes your way, and that includes having the sense to milk dumb luck for all it’s worth.

Last up, check this wacky place out : it’s called the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. .

Sounds pretty psychedelic, right? And it is. It is a private garden in Scotland, near Dumfries, and it is theme around science and mathematics.

And, presumably, at least a little bit of drugs.

Just ask Alice. When she's ten feet... tall.

Most of the pics in the article are pretty, in a kind of Alice In Wonderland meets Tim Burton but not like in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland way, but there is one image that I absolutely love.

It is this here staircase.

That is just so beautiful

I absolutely love how that looks. The effect is one of the stairs flowing down the side of the hill just like a banked river. The rest of it is nothing I have not seen before. That sort of art, the geometrical explorations and the stretched grids, became quite common in the psychedelic sixties.

Although this curlicue into the water is pretty cool.

See what I mean about Tim Burton?

But that staircase…. that is just gorgeous to my eyes. I love how it conforms to the landscape in a way that seems natural and yet is also quite unique.

More ideas for my all too commodious mental “things to do when I am an eccentric billionaire” file. So many weird things to do before I die.

My bucket list is written on an actual bucket.

One thing I have noticed in discussing life, growing up, depression and other mental problems, and other issues with people of my generation is that there is a distinctive pattern of dualism in how we view our parents.

Namely, one parent is the Good Parent and the other is the Bad Parent.

Now I don’t mean this in terms of parenting skill, exactly, although there is a very heavy overlap between the two interpretations.

It is more like one parent is the villain and the other the hero. In extreme cases, it is almost like one parent is an all-loving God and the other is the sum of all that is evil and wrong in the form of Satan.

I have found that the hero role is more often filled by the mother and it is the father who plays the role of the villain, but there are plenty of cases of the opposite as well.

But hero and villain don’t even begin to describe the nature of the duality. What is seems to be most often is a case of the Good But Weak parent versus the Strong But Angry parent.

And the stronger and more divergent this duality is, the more psychologically damaged the children will be, in my opinion.

Let us talk about the two types. We will call them Parent A and Parent B.

Parent A is kind, loving, nurturing, and benevolent. The love they offer is broad and unconditional. They are always sympathetic and patient, and rarely say anything harsh or upsetting. As a result, they are rarely the disciplinarian and offer their support without condition or force.

But they are passive. They do not initiate much of anything, they do not take on responsibility voluntarily (although they are diligent about what they do take on) and they are not very likely to deal with their children honestly and clearly when they feel the truth may hurt their children.

Parent B is impatient, angry, demanding, and often abusive, at least verbally. They rarely ever show approval or acceptance, and indeed, often seem to be working hard to give their children the impression that they hate them. They are often very critical and withholding of their children, and as a result, they are cast in the role of villain.

But they are assertive. They might not do all the work, but they almost always take all or most of the responsibility. They look after household finance, they make the tough decisions, they bear the burden of providing discipline and enforcing the rules.

This duality forms the bedrock basis for the children’s entire view of reality. As they grow, their entire world view becomes polarized. Naturally, they gravitate toward the accepting parent, Parent A, and become avoidant of Parent B.

Parent B senses their children pulling away from them, but so caught up in their role that they can’t react by becoming more loving. Instead, this only reinforces the sort of angry and impatient behaviours that have them playing the villain in the first place.

For you see, these roles reinforce one another strongly. Inside the mind of each parent is the deep conviction that they have to be how they are in response to the other.

Parent A thinks “I have to be soft and supportive and passively protective in order to balance out the aggression, anger, impatience, and harshness of Parent B. ”

Parent B thinks “I have to be the harsh one in order to compensate for the passivity and lack of structure and abdication of responsibility of Parent A. And I very much resent the role I have been cast in, but I don’t understand how to change it. Somebody has to do these things and I know it won’t be Parent A. ”

And over time, Parent A will become more Parent A in response to a perceived increase in Parent B’s Parent B-like activities, and then Parent B responds by becoming more Parent B, and the whole family moves a little further out towards the ends of the teeter totter.

And because this duality naturally expresses itself in ethical terms, it is nearly impossible for anyone involved, whether they be parent, child, or innocent bystander, to see that that problem is not the Bad Parent, but the duality itself, and the roles said duality force upon the parents involved.

The true villain might well be Parent A’s unwillingness to accept any part of Parent B’s role, or vice verse.

And of course, it’s the children in between who suffer the most. They invariably pick sides, and suffer from the fallout of their hopelessly unbalanced childhoods for their entire lives. Often, they even repeat this same dualistic mistake when they, themselves, become parents, because they know no better.

It is only by accepting the need for both ends of the scale and cooperating as parents so that neither parent plays villain or hero all the time that we can resolve this problem and keep it from echoing down the ages.

The opposite of insanity is not the opposite insanity.

The opposite of insanity is sanity, and that means meeting somewhere in the middle.