Category: philosophy

rejection what?

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It’s funny. I started writing a one-shot goofball comic about a guy trying to ask a girl out (romance!) and having to jump absurd hurdles to do so, and somehow, it’s not about romance.

It’s about rejection.

It’s also about hope.

It’s also about the crushing of hope, and how, after enough, sometimes, it’s best to give up.

Fuck it, right?

There’s no point in chasing the unattainable, especially when the unattainable isn’t even aware of your existence. What’s World War II to one can be unnoticeable to another, a leaf skittering past on a busy street.

Such is the nature of the universe. We think ourselves and our stories as all-consumingly important, but the entire existence of our species is a boson lost among countless others in the grander scheme of a universe filled with red giants and black holes.

Our importance is vastly overrated, to all but ourselves.

We jump through the hoops because of self-importance; we let go when it doesn’t work out only if we recognize it really doesn’t matter, and life’s too short to obsess.

Am I right?

Or do we cling on until all hope is lost? Obsession feeds on itself, doesn’t it?

Target: 100 words
Written: 185 words, comic: Romance #1

Book: Choose Yourself, James Altucher (ugh, the worst example of self-help - too busy being self-promotional and espousing financial success as the only measuring stick while pretending to spirituality - all is love, but fuck everyone, get yours!  It's clear he's full of shit through and through.  Never trust anyone who repeatedly tells how great they are, but only provides concrete examples of the opposite).
Comic: Pretty Deadly: The Rat 3-5 (and one of the big reasons I'm thinking about obsession today, thanks KSD).
Music: Zig's on 2004-07-01, State Radio (bootleg!  Sorry, guys, get back together and I'll come see a concert - you're vastly underrated)

the ineffable hat

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“This hat is ineffable,” he said.

She had to agree. The way it contoured his head, at once enlarging and somehow, amplifying his cranium, struck her as near impossible. Unexplainable.

“Might I try it?” she asked.

He agreed, but only on the terms that she have a hat of her own. There was a flash as the man spun in a wild, enthusiastic gambol. Light emanated from atop his head. She held up her hands to shield her eyes and something dropped into her lap – a brand new hat. She picked the newly formed hat up in her hands and examined it closely, before placing it on her head. There was something wonderful about the hat, at once masterfully complex and wonderfully benign.

The hat was indeed ineffable, she decided, faceted as it was to astutely represent the whole of the deftly transcendent and the undeniably simple. How like life, she thought, as the man bounded away, hat both askew and not askew – a multifarious and crystalline explosion, reflected and refracted in impossible planes and colours through infinite refinement, on simplistic foundations. She adjusted the hat on her head. A passerby smiled at her.

“Nice hat.”

“Yes,” she returned the smile. “It’s ineffable.”

Target: 100 words
Written: 213 words, short story: The Ineffable Hat

Read: Choose Yourself by James Altucher
Comics: Pretty Deadly 5-8
Music: Zeitgeist, Smashing Pumpkins

flower is a flower

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A flower is nothing but stem, leaves, roots and seed. But the variations are endless and can range from medicinal to delicious to fatal.

When we talk about a flower, we all know what mean. It’s simple.

But when we think of the multitude of different types, their functions and forms, how they interact with the ecosystem around them, from feeding bees to eating flies, their symbiosis with the soil, air and water in the world around them… it’s grandiose in its complexity.

Simple to complex. These are the things that make me happy.

Target: 100 words
Written: 844 words, short story: The Ineffable Hat

Read: Ice Cream & Sadness by Cyanide & Happiness
Comics: Pretty Deadly 1-4
Music: XO by Elliott Smith

simple/complex

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I’m a bit obsessed with systems, I’ll confess.

There’s a profound beauty in a well-designed system. The base is always a simple concept; in the variations and expansions, there comes complexity.

But it all boils down to a simple flow.

Systems based on complexity break easily. It’s like building a building without understanding the concepts of squares and triangles, circles and arches. Like saying the best way to describe a circle is to start with a Moebius strip.

I think that’s why I have such a difficult time getting into things that bow too hard to pretense and cleverness; people doing weird to seem smarter or cooler or whatever; it’s all such a show and a pathetic one at that. Like complex for complexity’s sake, it’s a thin premise that collapses easily.

Target: 100 words
Written: 211 words, short story: The Ineffable Hat

Read: Hot Sex by Jamye Waxman, Emily Morse (nice visuals, appreciated the inclusivity, but yeah - still read like a bad Cosmopolitan article, as though they'd Googled the answers, instead of living them).
Comic: Wytches 5-6, Wytches: Bad Egg (such a terrific series with very personal themes on parenting; I wish the makers had more time for it).
Music: Linkin Park - Xero (early LP, pre-Chester.  Very similar to later LP, post-Chester).