Warning, it IS in rhyme.
I am too blown away by the scope, depth, and beauty of that epic poem to have anything cognizant to say about it yet.
But it did inspire me to try this :
The Trial of Man
At last, I had him where I wanted him.
“O wretched creature Man! ” I began, “How do you justify all the wretched horrors you have visited upon yourself and the world?”
“I don’t.” he calmly replied.
“Because you can’t!” I accused.
“Yes, but not for the reason you think. “
“Because they are unjustifiable! ” I hotly retorted.
“Because I do not exist. ” he coolly replied. “I’m not real. There is no person called Man, or Humanity, or Homo Sapiens. I am merely a… well… “
He picked a bit of dried grass that had fallen out of his overalls off the ground.
“…. straw man. A rhetorical device, and a misleading one at that. ”
I was taken aback by this, but tried not to show it. “Are you seriously saying that there is no such thing as the human race? Because I can think of seven and a half billion reasons why that’s an absurd idea. “
“Oh come now, you know better than that.” he replied in an infuriatingly patient and indulgent tone. “I never said there was no such thing as humanity, I said there was no such person as Humanity. The human race is not, as yet, a conscious being. It therefore makes no sense to be angry with it. Or to praise it, for that matter.”
“But…. but…. ” I sputtered. Then got a grip on myself.
“But then who is to blame for all your crimes?” I demanded.
“No one. ” Man replied.
“NOBODY? ” I screamed.
“No, not nobody. No one. As in, no one person, or group of people. If there is no such person as Humanity, how can they commit crimes? As a species, we are barely beginning to develop the dimmest level of global consciousness via the internet. Global sentience is centuries away. “
“Oh, and as an aside, ” he added, “if there was such a person as Man, would they not be just as responsible for all the good things done in the world as all the bad? “
Well he had me there.
“Then why do we keep thinking you exist?” I asked.
“Because as human beings, we are so hardwired to be social that we can’t relate to anything if we don’t relate to it as a person. That’s why we anthropomorphize everything. That’s why we can get angry at our car for not starting, or at the weather for turning foul, or at made-up conceptualizations of our entire race. None of these things are conscious being that make decisions we can then judge. If you suggested that they were out loud, people would think we’re crazy. And yet, we react as though they are.”
He leaned forward in the witness box, and said, “The real scandal, kid, is that there is nobody in charge. NO BODY. Our social instincts force us to search for and believe in a hierarchy that does not exist. Never has. But these instincts are so strong that we invent entire religions based on a clearly imaginary leader figure who is in charge of everything just to make ourselves feel better. ”
He sat back down in his seat. “And we elect leaders and pretend they are responsible for everything when they clearly are not. And the craziest part is they think they are in charge too. But they’re not. The brutal truth is that civilization is an emergent property of humanity and we are all responsible for it. But we don’t know how to overcome our social instincts enough to see that yet, so we elect and worship figureheads. “
He then paused, and said, “I’m sorry, what was the question again?”
I sighed, and checked my notes.
Well, turns out that did not help me stay on point like I hoped it would.
Oh well, still some stuff worth articulating.
More after the break.
What does the fox sing?
None of this shit, that’s for sure.
Oddly enough, I make sense when I talk.
No, what this fox sings lately is stuff off SingSnap.
It’s a karaoke website and/or app and it’s the best one I have tried yet.
And I have tried a bunch.
What makes it great is not that it does any one thing better than the other apps, it’s that it does everything right. The interface is simple and attractive and easy to use. They have tons of content. Everything loads smoothly and quickly.
Quite frankly, it’s a pleasure to use.
Except for one little occasionally major thing : like most websites or apps with tons of content, the content is all user submitted, and some of it is absolute crap.
I’m talking riddled with typos, extra spaces everywhere, extraneous non-alphanumeric characters, and partial or complete failure to actually sync up with the damned song.
It’s a testament to how much I otherwise like the thing that I react to that shit by grumbling and looking for a better version rather than quitting in disgust.
It offends my delicate artistic sensitivities.
Speaking of which, i do not recommend pressing the “Hear how others sing it” button. Trust me, in most cases, the answer is “not very well at all”.
I clicked on it once and the girl sounded like Droopy after he got “fixed”.
But I’ve been having a ball with it, singing my heart out to my favorite songs. I’ve done some Eminem, some Tom Waits, a LOT of Tragically Hip (RIP Gordie :(), and one of my fave all time songs to sing, Total Eclipse of the Heart.
And the thing is, not only is singing fun, it’s also very good for me. Turns out that singing helps people with sleep apnea firm up the muscles in their neck and soft palate that go flaccid and block your airway when you sleep.
It is also my personal opinion that it helps clear the carbon dioxide that pools in the bottom of my lungs. The stuff my breathing exercises help me get rid of, especially the one where I empty my lungs as completely as I can.
Singing seems way more fun than that.
So now I have a new hobby : singing. Maybe I will record one of my performances one of these days, but I am in no big hurry.
Sing with it
Sing for the year
Sing for the laughter
Sing for the year
Sing with it
Sing for today
’cause maybe tomorrow
the Good Lord’ll take me away…
It’s true. I could go at any moment.
Damn right I’m gonna sing.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.