20040607   

Michael considered fate at 12:12   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

Is it even possible for me to write one post that isn't painfully self-aware? Everything on here is blogging-related. Every post questions blogging, compares other blogs, contrasts blogging with real life. It's like I'm trying to come to terms with the process and in that, I am missing the point.. maybe.

I imagine this is what the first thinking chimp went through.

I'm eating a banana, he must have thought, why am I eating the banana? It tastes good.. but would I have thought to eat the banana if the other chimps didn't eat the banana?. He'd be confused. Am I eating the banana because I am supposed to eat the banana, or because I want to eat the banana? Am I paving the road of my own destiny or walking the path already cleared for me?

And then he'd write some philosophical mumbo jumbo about self. Probably some ego, id, super-ego stuff.. Then he'd publish it on some bark - ignoring his feat of creating the first written language known to chimp - and later on down the road some dude named Freud would find this bark, learn chimp, and pass the ideas off as his own.

People have been ripping eachother off from the beginning of time. Is it any surprise that we'd rip off the chimps, too? Of course not.

Man, this is good stuff. the chimp would think as he was writing down his manuscripts on some banana leaves, I bet this shit would blow some minds, man.. good stuff. And he'd be right.. it really did blow some minds. What he didn't know, however, was that his fellow chimps were stealing his bananas while he was engrossed in philosophical thought and that his life work would be ripped off by a pervert named freud.

Fucking perverts.

So the chimp would toil away with his theories as the other chimps hung around in trees smoking banana peels and generally not thinking too hard. They had found, early on, that thinking too much resulted in odd anti-social behaviour they dubbed "contemplation" and they wanted no part of it. The more anti-social one of them became, the less chimp-ass he was likely to get.. and if you've ever seen chimps.. ain't nothing any more depressing for a chimp than not banging for a few days.

Later on, the thinking chimp - now relegated to the lower branches of the tree, his social status that of a tree-bug - would become curious about the flat surface below his home. "Ground" they called it. It was as foreign as the moon and scary but as he spent more and more time near it he became more and more curious. There must be something to this "ground", else why would there be a name for it? he wisely thought. None of the other chimps ever considered this. They were too busy touching themselves, eating bananas, and banging. He, however, became so curious that one day he reached out his toe and poked at it. It didn't poke back.

Why is there a ground if we are not on it? the chimp thought.. and with that, he leapt from the tree and landed, firmly, on the sand. Wow he thought. I am on the ground. After his initial discovery the chimp ran around, on all fours, thinking I am on the ground, why am I on the ground, what will become of me - on the ground, how long can I stay on the ground before I blow up? Are there bananas on the ground? If so, I will eat them and have to question why I am eating them - no other chimp eats bananas on the ground, so I won't be eating them because other chimps are, anymore, I will be eating them because they are on the ground and I am on the ground so do I eat what is where I am because I am me and I eat because I am on the ground. He stopped to take a breath. Well? Am I?.

By this point the other chimps, taking a break from banging, had noticed that he was on the ground. They became curious and, while there were in fact no new bananas on the ground, there were a few rotten ones that had fallen from the tree here and there. The chimp tried some of these out and found them to be strong, a bit pungent, and not particularly tasty, but holy crap did it make him fart.

The other chimps liked to fart. It reminded them of banging, somehow.. and eating bananas. So before he knew it all the other chimps were down on the ground, banging, eating bananas, farting, and not thinking too hard. They sent him away, up to the tippy-top of the tree - a place that used to be the end-all-be-all of chimp-pads, with the rippest bananas getting the most sun and the thin branches creating the most bouncing-swaying pleasure for banging... but now it was nothing special and he was left alone to think once more.

He sat on the highest branch, legs curled up under him, brow furrowed, chin resting on his fist, and he thought some more. He considered the situation carefully and he said to himself It was their perception that the ground was a bad place, and now they love it. Perhaps nothing is as it seems. Maybe bananas are really disgusting. I happen to know that crabs and lobsters are disgusting "garbage disposals" of the sea but maybe the other chimps will gladly eat them if for no other reason than that they are rare.. rare up here on land, anyway.

And so, his manuscripts secured away in a dark dry cave somewhere, he went off to conquer the sea, build himself a lobster boat, and start the first chimp seafood distribution company. He went on to do alright but that was the end of chimps in trees and no one thought much about bananas for a long time....

Until some dude named Freud wandered into a cave one day so he could play with himself in peace.. and he stumbled upon some old banana leaves. Before he noticed any writing on them he had used half of them to wipe his butt after poking at his prostate but when he did notice the writing he was in awe. He went on to spread the theories of that first chimp-philosopher and became rather famous for it..

It's just too bad he wiped his butt with the really good stuff.